Colorado Dawn

by Kaki Warner

  Before leaving the stable, Ash got a blank bank draft from his saddlebag, filled it out as best he could, then went to the kitchen, where Miss Hathaway and Edwina Brodie were sitting at the table peeling potatoes, and Mrs. Kemble was bent before the oven door, basting a ham with a honey and applesauce glaze that made Ash’s stomach rumble. Nodding to the two at the table, he turned to the landlady. “If I might have a word with you, ma’am?”

  She straightened, her expression none too friendly. “So you’re finally awake. Never knew a body could sleep so long. But at least when you’re asleep, you’re not causing trouble.”

  “My apologies.” He put on his best smile. It dinna even faze the hardhearted shrew. “I thought we should settle up before we leave tomorrow.” He held out the bank draft and hoped he had written it correctly.

  Wiping her hands on her apron, she eyed it suspiciously. “What’s that?”

  “Payment for our rooms and the fine meals you’ve provided and for stabling the animals. I trust it will be sufficient.”

  She took the draft and studied it, a frown drawing her gray brows together. “More than sufficient. In fact, double sufficient. Why’s that?”

  “For the aggravation our shenanigans have caused you.”

  “Humph.” She squinted at the signature. “I can hardly read this chicken scratching. Looks like it says Fifth Viscount of Ashby. Who’s that?”

  “Me.”

  She glared up at him. “I thought you were Angus Wallace.”

  “I am.”

  “Is this more of your shenanigans?”

  “It is not,” Maddie’s voice cut in as she entered the room. “My husband is indeed Viscount Ashby, a Scottish lord and member of the British peerage. But rather than attract mawkish attention, he prefers to go by his given name when visiting America.”

  Ash stared at his wife in amazed amusement as she glided by, every inch the grand dame. The two black eyes and sticking plastered nose rather tarnished the effect, but she nonetheless cut a striking figure.

  “Lord Ashby was also a decorated colonel in the Prince of Wales’s Own Tenth Hussars,” she went on, proudly. “Which is, of course, the most famed cavalry unit in the entire British Army.”

  The entire army, Ash mused, sharing a glance with the ladies at the potato bowl and wondering how the other regiments would feel about that.

  Mrs. Kemble sniffed. “I never heard of someone having two names.”

  His viscountess leaned over to whisper in her ear, “His family lives in a castle.”

  That got the old biddy’s blood pumping. “Do they? A real castle? Like real lords and ladies?”

  “Exactly like real lords and ladies.” With a triumphant smile, his lady wife sailed on by, her work complete. “May I help you set the table, Mrs. Kemble? I daresay you’ve never before had a real viscountess do your bidding.”

  Edwina Brodie rolled her eyes. Miss Hathaway coughed into the peelings.

  “A viscountess,” Mrs. Kemble breathed. “Wait until I tell Ruby.” Then rushing into the dining room after Maddie, she called, “Would that be better than a baron?”

  The reverend and Silas departed early the next morning amid invitations for them to bring Mrs. Zucker to Heartbreak Creek for a visit. “So you can meet the children and help us christen the baby,” Edwina urged.

  “And I should have the last of the rooms in the hotel refurbished soon,” Lucinda added. “If you’ll let me know when you’re coming, I’ll set aside one of the suites.”

  “And Tricks would be so happy to see you, Silas,” Maddie put in, dabbing at her eyes.

  Ash smiled dutifully and rocked on his heels, wondering how much longer these bluidy good-­byes would drag on. By his calculations, they were already an hour late if they planned to billet in Jefferson that night.

  While the women prattled on, he mentally went through the list of preparations: The landlady and Chub had been paid. The doctor had checked Thomas, pronounced him fit for travel—­as long as he dinna ride horseback or sit too long—­then collected his fee and left. Maddie’s equipment and the ladies’ valises had been stowed, along with extra water and food. Weapons had been secured. He had personally inspected the vehicles, and the animals were harnessed and waiting. All that remained was to load three wee women into the buggy.

  A monumental task, apparently. He looked over to Brodie for help in moving things along, but the sheriff just shrugged like there was nothing he could do. He would have made a poor drill sergeant.

  Finally the reverend released the brake. As soon as the buckboard rolled out into the street, Ash politely herded the women toward the house, advising them to attend their needs and muster by the wagons in ten minutes.

  Thirty minutes later, they came out the back door, followed by the landlady, the deaf widow, and her simpering daughter. Fearing another series of protracted good-­byes, Ash marched toward them.

  “Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Kemble. It has been a delight to meet you all, but now we must bid you good-­bye. Ladies?” He made a shooing motion.

  They looked at him.

  “Mount up.”

  They continued to look at him.

  “Now!”

  Fifteen minutes later, they were on their way back home to Heartbreak Creek.

  Home?

  When had he begun to think of Heartbreak Creek as home?

  Twenty-two

  It was Tuesday afternoon, and Pru and the children were walking back from school and speculating on whether or not it would snow that night, when Brin shrieked, “Pa!” and took off down the boardwalk so fast her floppy hat flew off her head. Before it touched ground, the other three charged after her, shouting and waving.

  Pru stopped to retrieve the hat, then watched in amusement as Declan staggered under the assault of his three youngest children trying to climb all over him. Only R. D. remained aloof—­being too big and old for such childish displays—­until Edwina came out of the hotel and launched an attack of her own on him.

  Not seeing Thomas and thinking he might be around back, Pru slipped into the alley that ran beside the mercantile to the back-street.

  She had thought of little else but him in the days he had been gone. “Heart mate” he had called her. A fanciful word. But there was an element of truth in it. She did feel connected to Thomas on a level beyond the physical or even the intellectual. It was a spiritual bonding that transcended everything that had gone before. In his eyes, she was not just the scarred daughter of a slave, or Edwina’s half-­black half sister, or Lone Tree’s captive, or the negress teaching in the little schoolhouse by the creek.

  She was his heart mate.

  The idea of that—­of him, of seeing him again after their short separation—­made her laugh out loud.

  Quickening her steps as she reached the backstreet, she turned toward the hotel. Maddie’s wagon was parked by the stoop. Lucinda’s buggy stood beside it, with Thomas’s painted horse tied to the rear.

  Filled with equal parts of anticipation and nervousness, Pru walked briskly down the track, searching for his sturdy form among the figures milling at the back of the wagon.

  Tricks raced by, Agnes nipping at his heels. Pru smiled, watching them. If it was possible for dogs to laugh, they would be doing it.

  Ahead, voices rose as Maddie supervised her husband in the lowering of the stair at the back of the wagon. Lucinda hurried out of the hotel, followed by a white-­haired man carrying a black satchel—­Doc Boyce? Mr. Wallace spoke to him for a moment, then the doctor hurried up the steps and into the wagon.

  Why? Who needed a doctor?

  Pru walked faster, dread growing as she noted everyone was accounted for except Thomas.

  “Pru!” Declan called from behind her.

  She stopped and waited for him to catch up. What she saw in his face as he drew near sent dread blossoming into full-­blown fear. “What’s wrong? Is it Thomas? Has something happened?”

  “He’s been shot. But he’s alive.” />
  Shot. Alive. Hurt. “How bad?”

  “He was doing okay, but this morning when he woke up, his fever—­”

  She whirled and started walking again.

  He fell into step beside her.

  “Where are you taking him?” she asked, a part of her amazed at how calm her voice sounded despite the terror clawing at her throat. “He can’t stay at the sheriff’s office or in his room in your carriage house all alone with nobody to see to him.”

  “Ed can—­”

  “In her condition? And what if he tries to get up, or needs to be sponged, or…​something.”

  “He won’t stay in the hotel. You know that.”

  “Then bring him to the school. We can clean out the storage room.”

  “I don’t know if that would be wise, Pru. People might talk.”

  “Then let them!” She rounded on him, patience gone. “There’s always talk—­about me, Thomas, anyone who’s different. I don’t care. I’m used to it.” Realizing she still held Brin’s hat, she thrust it toward him and resumed walking. “Bring him to the school. I’ll tend him.”

  “But—­”

  “Bring him, Sheriff! Or I’ll find a way to do it myself.”

  He said no more until they reached the wagon. The Wallaces and Lucinda still hovered at the back steps, looking lost in the way people did when faced with a crisis they could do nothing about. “Is the doctor still inside?” Pru asked.

  “Aye,” Mr. Wallace said.

  “Please don’t unharness the mules just yet,” she instructed him. “We’ll be moving Thomas to the school when Doc Boyce is finished. I could use your help clearing the storeroom and getting him inside.”

  “Of course.”

  “Have you everything you’ll need?” Lucinda asked.

  Pru shot her a look of gratitude—­not just for the offer, but for not questioning her decision. “Perhaps some bedding. A cot, if you have one.”

  “I’ll have Yancey check the storeroom.” Motioning Maddie to follow, she started back inside, issuing instructions as she went. “Ask Cook to pack a basket. Miriam can collect bedding. We’ll take everything over in the buggy so it will be there when he arrives.”

  Pru looked up at the closed door, gathering courage to face what she might find when she went in there. She knew it would be a shock, seeing Thomas laid low. He had always seemed so indomitable, so unstoppable. Even wounded, he had ridden days to find her after Lone Tree had taken her to the Indian encampment. It seemed impossible that now that she’d allowed him into her heart, he might be torn from it forever.

  She couldn’t bear it. Wouldn’t allow it.

  Bracing herself, she put a foot on the first step.

  A hand touched her shoulder. “Miss Lincoln.”

  She turned, impatient to reach Thomas, then saw the worry in Angus Wallace’s startling green eyes. “Yes?”

  “Anything you need, ma’am. Anything at all. He’s a good man, so he is. He deserves everything we can do to save him.”

  “Yes. He does,” she said and continued up the steps.

  It was late. Wind howled at the door like a starving beast, and already snow had formed crescents on the bottoms of the windowpanes.

  Shivering, Pru settled deeper into the chair beside the bed and pulled her shawl closer. Even though the little woodstove in the classroom down the hall was blazing as high as it could go, the chill reached into her very bones. She doubted she would ever grow accustomed to it. Having lived most of her life at near sea level in the sultry bayou country of Louisiana, she still struggled with the thin, cold air of the Colorado Rockies.

  She watched the slow rise and fall of Thomas’s chest and felt her own lungs take on the tempo, expanding and contracting in unison with his, as if to encourage him to take the next breath. The rhythm soothed her.

  Over the last week, her life had been pared down to simple, rote responses to the most basic needs of the man lying in the bed—­warmth when he shivered, cool cloths when he burned, water if she could force it down him. Keeping him alive.

  She refused to fail him. To do so would wrest all hope from her life.

  Thomas made a restless movement, then lay still again.

  She checked the small watch she wore pinned in her skirt pocket, wondering if it was time to give him more medicine. His fever had started up again earlier this evening after Declan and Mr. Wallace had stopped by with another basket of food from the hotel kitchen. He had become agitated despite the laudanum the doctor insisted she give him for pain and restlessness. But after dosing him with two droppers of aconite solution, he seemed to have settled somewhat.

  The wound had improved but was still oozing. Doc Boyce had shown her how to flush it with carbolized water but said it couldn’t be allowed to close, since it had to heal from the inside out. He had instructed her on how to fix a drawing poultice made from flaxseed and ground mustard, which she was to keep applying as long as it was still drawing out infection. For almost a week now, she had flushed the wound every time she had applied the poultice, and it seemed to Pru the oozing was less and the redness was beginning to fade.

  But that could be wishful thinking.

  She rolled her head, trying to ease the stiffness in her neck and shoulders. As she did, her gaze fell on the small leather pouch sitting on the bedside table. Declan had given it to her when they’d first brought Thomas to the schoolhouse.

  “Keep it safe,” he had said, handing it to her. “It’s sacred to Thomas, and he’ll want it when he wakes up.”

  It weighed next to nothing and felt empty except for a single hard, round thing. It had no beading or painted symbols like on his war shirt, and the stitching was crude. “What’s in it?” she had asked Declan.

  “He’ll tell you if he wants you to know. Put it where he can see it.”

  She had done as he’d asked, thinking this was just one more thing about Thomas she didn’t know. There was so much she might never truly come to terms with…​his language, the myths and spirits that guided him, his reverence for all living things even though he would willingly take a life, as she had seen when he had come to take her from Lone Tree. And she was certain she would never understand the sacred sun dance ceremony that required self-­mutilation to prove manhood.

  But she did know the heart of the man who bore those terrible scars, and she loved him.

  “Eho’nehevehohtse…”

  Pru jerked upright in the chair, realizing she had fallen asleep. Her gaze flew to Thomas, who had rolled onto his uninjured side. His eyes were open and fixed on her.

  She stared back, trying to find her Thomas in that dark, unwavering gaze, rather than the stranger who had drifted in and out of fevered sleep over the last days.

  He smiled weakly. “Prudence.”

  “You’re awake.” Rising quickly, she went to rest a hand on his forehead. Cool. No fever. A giddy relief made her hand tremble. Tucking it behind her skirts, she let out the breath she hadn’t even been aware of holding and smiled down at him. “You’re better.”

  “Better than what?” He grimaced and licked dry lips with a coated tongue. “Did you give me mataho?”

  She shook her head, not sure what that was. “Laudanum.”

  “I do not like it. You will not give it to me again.”

  She smiled at the haughty command even as tears clouded her eyes. He was going to be all right. He was going to live. “Are you hungry?”

  “Water, first. Then buffalo steak.”

  “Water, first. Then broth.” She was unable to stop the tears from overflowing.

  He frowned, his dark eyes shadowed with weariness even though he’d slept a day and a half. “Why do you cry, heme’oono?”

  She blotted her face with her apron, but still the tears came. “Because I’m happy. Because you’re going to live. Because I couldn’t have borne it if you weren’t.”

  He patted the bed beside him. “Come, Prudence. Lie beside me and I will dry your tears.”

 
She had to laugh. Did the man actually think to come at her in his condition? “Let me get the water and broth. If you’re still awake after that, maybe I’ll let you read to me from the primer.”

  She returned several minutes later with a pitcher of fresh water and a bowl of broth. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, one hand clasped to his injured side, the other clutching the leather pouch. As she set the tray on the table, he looked up with a stricken, almost panicked expression—­if such an emotion as panic was possible for Thomas.

  “I thought it was gone. I thought I lost it.”

  She sat in the chair beside the bed, and leaning forward, braced her crossed arms on her knees. “Declan saved it for you. He told me to put it where you could see it, but I must have accidentally pushed it behind some of the medicine bottles. I’m sorry for worrying you. I know it’s sacred to you.”

  “Not sacred. Necessary.”

  She waited, but he said no more, and his closed expression forbade her to pry.

  After he drank two cups of water and half the broth, he sank back onto the pillows, the pouch still clutched in his hand.

  “Would you like for me to put it around your neck?” she asked.

  But he was already asleep, the hand holding the pouch resting on his scarred chest.

  She pulled the covers over him, then quietly left the room.

  He slept most of the next two days. When she went in on the third morning after the fever broke, she found him standing at the window, fully dressed, squinting out at the snow-­covered street. The glare of sunshine off the unbroken white was almost painful to the eyes. “You shouldn’t be up,” she scolded, setting the breakfast tray on the chair so she could clear space on the small bedside table.

  He didn’t respond but turned to watch in silence as she carefully set the pouch aside, then moved the tray from the chair to the table. This time she’d brought oatmeal with honey and cinnamon, stewed apples, and two coddled eggs.

  “Still no meat?” He eyed the tray with a look of disappointment.