The Lady's Arrangement (Help Wanted)
Page 28
“I don’t care about the deeds. I don’t care about any of this. Just Jess.”
I patted her leg, and she let me. I crouched low as I crept forward, easing against and around each spire of rock. It was the whimper I eventually heard that brought me lower, the sound of a shovel that caused me to stop. I pressed my back against a wall of rock and listened.
“Stop your whining.”
I scooted to where I could peer around the edge. Jess was on Boss, straddling the horse, one crutch across the saddle, his face white as he leaned away from his healing leg, trying to take the strain off it.
“Shut up.” Ted was on all fours, digging under a low shelf of rock. I loosened the loop off my trigger and waited, watching Jess’s face tighten as he moved.
Ted leaned into the crevice, grunting. Jess stiffened, propped one foot in a gun loop beneath the saddle, and slapped Boss’s neck with the flat of his hand. Boss gave a lurch and jerked forward. He veered in a sharp cut to the side, barely missing Ted, with Jess holding on, plastering himself against Boss’s neck.
Papers flew as Ted rolled to the side and came to his feet. He was quick, his pistol out and pointed at Jess in one fast move. Amazingly fast for a one-armed man. But I was faster, and it had nothing to do with having two hands.
“Drop it, Ted.”
There were two shots, the first at me, the second at Jess. The bullet near me grazed the rock beside my head. Shards of limestone shattered in my face as the bullet ricocheted away. Jess tumbled with his. Boss dipped. And Regina screamed.
The third shot was mine. Ted staggered backwards, and the one-armed ranch manager hit the ground.
By the time I reached Jess, Regina was there. Blood spilled onto his shirt as she wrapped her arms around him.
“Jess,” I shouted, taking his head in my hands and holding it up. His eyes fluttered.
“Ben? Ma?”
“Where you hit, son?” I looked down at his shirt, his legs, using one hand to cover every bit of the boy I could see.
“I’m not. It’s just my leg.”
I ran my hands where the break had been. I felt the dislocation. “Hold on, I’m going to adjust your brace. It’s going to hurt.”
Regina helped me this time, leaning close and holding on to her son to steady him for the pain. I slid my hands beneath the splints and straps of the contraption, set them at both sides, and pressed. Jess jerked. He let out nothing more than a moan. “Hold on to him,” I said to his mother. I glanced down at her as I grabbed at the straps and splints to tighten them. Blood splattered where she leaned over Jess. ‘Regina?”
I took Jess’s mother by the shoulders and turned her to face me. Blood ran down her face, mixing with tears. Red. More red. Too much red.
“You’re hurt!” I grabbed her close, ran my hands over her face, feeling and searching for where Ted’s bullet had gone. “You didn’t stay where I told you to stay.” Of course she didn’t. Regina wouldn’t. No mother would.
“He’s got to be okay,” she whispered. “My boy’s got to be okay.”
“Ma?”
Regina pushed my hands away, tears thinning the blood as they splashed onto her son. “Fix Jess.”
Helping a boy was helping his mother, even his stepmother in some cases, the woman that mattered. The look in those green eyes told me what I’d known all along.
I bent over Jess, keeping close to his mother. I drew every strap tight, made sure each splint of his brace was in place, slow and fast at the same time.
When each was, I held her. Drew her close with one arm and kept her there as she lost the strength to hold on herself. “Regina…” I whispered her name, but it felt like a shout inside as my other hand plowed through her hair, checked her neck and her face, and searched for the damage Ted’s bullet had done. “Regina. Hold on. We’re not parting, not this way.” Her eyes closed and she bled into my hand. Red blood through red hair. I looked at her boy.
“Can you manage, son?”
Jess was on his feet before I had his mother up in my arms, his hands full of the papers his pa had left behind, his eyes full of the love that was stronger than death. I wouldn’t leave the boy behind with a dead man who had probably killed his father in this same spot. I helped Jess onto Walter—sidesaddle, but he didn’t argue—and I held onto his mother as I climbed into Boss’s saddle. Jess made a sound, the right sound, and Walter moved. I kneed Boss, and together we hied it to Doc.
****
Red. I made this arrangement. The final one. I took my redheaded wife and her son to the red dirt of Oklahoma, where I married her again. I’d wired ahead, and Jim had everything ready—Pop, some of our friends, and a real preacher waiting at that half-built house on the rise.
“Pop, I want you to meet Regina and Jess.” I helped my family down from the wagon and watched Pop’s face, the widening of his eyes, the memories that wanted out.
Pop stepped forward, studying the woman that was to be his new daughter-in-law, the trousers she wore, a shirt that fit, and his new grandson.
“They have land up in Kansas. Lots of it.”
Pop shook Jess’s hand, the one Jess wasn’t using to hold his crutch, and then he turned to Regina. “My son always was partial to red.” Pop smiled. He didn’t mention her trousers, or the bandage around that pile of red where Ted’s bullet had hit but thankfully not stayed. I hadn’t seen Pop smile in ages. “You remind me of someone,” Pop said still looking at my wife. Maybe it was the Easterner in her, or the Easterner that had gone out of her. “That was a long time ago, but looking at you makes it all clear.”
Pop looked at me, then. More red. Red swimming in his eyes.
“We need to build on, Pop. Just like we did the last time we put up a house. Gotta make room for the new wife and the son. Again.” I wrapped an arm around Regina and pulled her close. “And you’ll be the new Mrs. Duncan. As soon as we say, ‘I do.’ Again.”
A word about the author…
Born and raised in the Midwest, Colleen earned a four-year degree in Medical Technology and used it to travel and explore other parts of the country while working in the field of science.
Outside the laboratory she delves deeply into literature, both reading and writing, her interest piqued by tales involving moral dilemmas and the choices people come up against.
A lover of the outdoors as well as a comfy living room, Colleen is always searching inside and out for the next good story.
Visit with Colleen at:
https://www.facebook.com/ ColleenLDonnelly
http://www.colleenldonnelly. com/
https://twitter.com/ColleenLDonnell
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