Sunday stood as Colin approached. “She’s in here. I ain’t never seen anything so… awful.”
“Is she hurt bad?”
“There’s blood on the side of her head, but it’s more’n that. She’s covered with—Hell!” Sunday shouted in anguish. “She’s covered with shit from the privy and she might of lost her mind!”
Sunday’s anguished words reached T.C. as he rounded the house. An instant later he was there, pushing her aside so he could see. What he saw stunned him. Jane lay curled up on the floor of the privy, her head covered with the tail of her dress. The keening sounds that came from her were of deep, horrendous grief.
“What’s the matter with her?” he demanded, and bent to kneel down. Sunday grabbed his arm.
“It’s plain to me,” she retorted angrily and moved to shield Jane from the eyes of the two men. “Get away, both of ya. Can’t ya see she dyin’ a shame?”
“Who did this?” The emotional croaking question came from T.C.
“That ain’t what’s important now. We got to get this stuff off her. Somebody get that bathin’ tub from the henhouse and get the cookstove fired up for water. And… don’t ya let her catch ya lookin’ at her.” Sunday issued the orders, then waited for the men to move. “Well? Are yore feet stuck in mud?”
“There’s blood on her… dress—”
“I’m thinkin’ it’s from the whack on the head, but I ain’t sure. What I am sure of is… it’ll kill her for ya to see her with shit smeared all over her face. Now go!”
T.C. masked his anguish with anger. “I’ll kill the bastard who did this. I’ll strip ever inch of hide off his back first, then, by Gawd, he’ll wish he was dead a hundred times before he is!”
“I’ll take Polly to see if anybody’s in the tub.” Herb spoke calmly, his voice battling T.C.’s angry tirade. “If there ain’t, I’ll get it out the back door without them knowin’ about it.”
Colin took T.C.’s arm. “Come on. Let the women handle it for now.”
“Why would anybody do… such a thing to her?” T.C. allowed Colin to pull him away.
“Maybe we can find out after the women clean her up a bit. Come on to the house, Tennihill,” Colin said as they passed the man standing a distance away. “We got to get to the bottom of this.”
The first thing Sunday did when she got Jane into the house was clean her face. Maude dipped towel after towel in warm water and handed them to Sunday. Jane stood as docilely as a whipped dog. Both Sunday and Maude realized that she was in deep shock. Her arms hung to her sides; her eyes were blank. When her face was clean, they found marks on her cheeks and forehead where the stick that had been dipped into the cesspit had scraped the skin.
Maude placed a cold, wet cloth on the side of her head where blood still oozed.
“They knocked her senseless before they did this.” Maude clicked her tongue sorrowfully. “Why in the world?”
“They could’a killed her if’n they wanted to. I’m just bumfuzzled about it.” Sunday unbuttoned the waist of Jane’s dress and pulled it down to let it fall to the floor.
It wasn’t until all her filthy clothes had been removed and Maude and Sunday were lowering her into the warm tub of water that she came out of her mindless state. She looked wildly about, screamed, struck out at Sunday, and tried to climb out of the tub.
Sunday’s superior strength held her firmly.
“Jane! Jane! Yo’re all right. It’s me, Sunday. Ain’t nobody goin’ to hurt ya. Yo’re here with me and Maude.”
The door was flung open. T.C. came storming into the room.
“What’er you doing to her?” he demanded.
“Christ on a horse!” Sunday yelled. “Get out of here.”
“Go, Mr. Kilkenny. It’d be awful for her if she saw ya lookin’ at her.” Maude pushed T.C. firmly out the door and shut it.
“Some men ain’t got no more sense than a pissant,” Sunday sputtered.
“He’s worried.” Maude handed her the castile soap from the surgery that T.C. had brought in when Herb had returned with the tub. She placed it on a chair, along with a stack of clean towels.
On her knees beside the tub, Sunday lathered Jane with soap, then worked it into her hair. Jane was now perfectly still. Great racking sobs tore from her throat. She cried openly, her hands in the water at her sides, her face turned up. Her bald-faced misery was one of the saddest sights Sunday had ever seen.
“I’m washin’ it off ya, Jane. Ain’t nobody goin’ to see ya like this but me and Maude. Ya got a good bashin’ up beside yore head. I got to wash yore hair, but I’ll be careful.”
T.C. paced up and down the hall. The Indian side of him tried to be calm; the Irish side wouldn’t permit it. He uttered cuss words he hadn’t used in years.
“I’ve heard of meanness, but nothing like this.” Pacing like a caged cat, T.C. stopped in front of Colin, who sat on the stairs. “Have you ever heard of anybody doin’ this?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Was it meant to shame her, like Sunday said? Why? What has she done to be shamed for?”
“No Indian did it.” Tennihill, sitting on the floor, offered his opinion while he pared at his fingernails with his pocketknife.
“When I find out who did it, I’ll roast his ass over a slow fire, Indian fashion.”
“Don’t figure he hit her with the stick he used to smear her. That stick was poked down in the hole.”
T.C. glanced at Colin. “Could it have been the butt of a pistol?”
“More’n like a stick of stove wood to knock her out. She’d a put up a fight. I didn’t see no sign a one.”
“The dirty, low-down, cowardly sonofabitch!”
Maude came out of the kitchen and closed the door behind her.
“Is she all right?” T.C. asked quickly.
“She’s got a awful bash on the head. We tried to be careful of it when we washed that… stuff out of her hair. Sunday’s dryin’ it now. I’m goin’ to get her nightdress. I thought you ought to see these.” She held out small pieces of folded paper. “I found them in the pocket of her dress. I emptied out the pocket when I went to soak the dress in a bucket of water.”
T.C. took the papers from Maude and went into the surgery where a lamp was burning on the desk. Colin and Tennihill followed. He unfolded the notes and read them one after the other. He gave a low whistle of amazement and stepped back, leaving the notes on the desk for Colin and Tennihill to read.
“That explains why she didn’t want to stay here. She probably got the first one the day she arrived. It was the next day that she was so determined to leave, and it wasn’t because she thought I had brought the women here to marry them off. She used that as an excuse.”
T.C. began to pace again. Tennihill arranged the notes in the order he figured they might have been received, the last one being the one that threatened to kill her.
“I heard talk today that Miss Love was not stayin’ on. Guess ever’body knowed about it.”
“Why ya reckon he wanted her to stay?”
“Beats me.”
T.C. looked at Tennihill. “You don’t think it’s Bob Fresno?”
“I’m thinkin’ not. He’s got a hard-on fer her. Be tickled to get her off to hisself. Like I told ya today.”
“Maybe he met her outside. When she wouldn’t go with him, he did this?”
“Doubt it. Ain’t his style.”
“You said he was sly as a fox.”
“He is that.”
“Dangerous, when he don’t get his way?”
“As a cornered rattler.”
“She’s not getting out of my sight until we find out who sent her these threats and who waylaid her.” T.C. marched out of the surgery and went to the door of the kitchen.
Colin lounged in the doorway. “That’s goin’ to be pretty hard to do, friend.”
“Yeah? Well, you watch me.” T.C. knocked on the door, then opened it. “Is she dressed?”
“Yes. Come in.”
Jane was
in the nightdress she had worn the night he went to Doc’s room. Ignoring his presence, she stood quietly as Sunday rubbed the ends of her damp hair with a towel. Her eyes were red-rimmed and focused on a spot on the wall. Deep scratches marked her cheeks, her forehead and the backs of her hands.
“How is she?”
Sunday shook her head in a silent warning before she spoke.
“She’s got a big lump on her head, but the cut’s not deep. We’ve done ‘bout all we can tonight. We’ll take her up to bed. I’ll stay tonight if ya want me too.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’ll take care of her.” T.C. crossed the room and swung Jane up into his arms. She made no protest and let her head drop to his shoulder. He strode across the hall to his room. Before he entered he said, “Find another place to sleep tonight, Colin.” He went inside and kicked the door shut with his foot.
“Well, don’t that beat all?” Sunday stood in the kitchen doorway with her hands on her hips. Her dress was wet down the front, her blond ringlets a tangled mess as usual.
Tennihill headed for the door.
“Our Mr. Kilkenny’s got a bad case of heart trouble, I’m thinkin’. I better pull foot. It might be catchin’. ‘Night, folks.”
Chapter 17
THE room was dark.
Jane threw her arms around the neck of the warm body holding her and clung tightly.
“No… no… no…—”
“Don’t be scared. You’re all right, sweet girl. Just hold on tight—” T.C. murmured to her. “Nothing will hurt you.”
When she felt herself being lowered to the bed and the arms pull away, she panicked and cried out.
“Don’t go!”
“I’m going to light the lamp and get covers for you. You’re shaking.”
“Don’t go!”
“All right. I won’t leave you.” T.C. sat down on the side of the bed with her on his lap.
An implacable hatred for the one who had done this to her caused droplets of sweat to break out on his forehead.
Her arms were locked around him as if he were an anchor and she were being swept to sea. She couldn’t seem to get close enough to him. Her face burrowed in the curve of his neck and she shook violently. T.C. felt the heavy hand of fear as he realized she might be sinking deeper into that black mindless void.
He put his hand over her ear and pressed her head to his shoulder.
“Colin!” he bellowed.
The door opened almost instantly and a ribbon of light shone from the hallway. Colin, with Sunday behind him, came into the room.
“Light the lamp. She’s scared to death.”
“Don’t look at me.”
Quite suddenly she was soundlessly and helplessly crying. Her silent agony was something T.C. could hardly endure.
“I won’t, love. Shhhh—Don’t cry.”
Colin lit the lamp and light flooded the room. He turned the wick down until there was no smoke going up the chimney, then, with his hand on Sunday’s back urged her to the door.
“I’ve got to cover you, honey.” T.C. placed tender kisses on her forehead. “Your hands and feet are like ice.”
“I’m so… bad—”
“Bad? You’re not bad! You’re good and sweet. The sweetest woman I ever knew.”
“Bad… blood—”
“No. no—There’s no such thing as bad blood.”
“I’m… dirt… filth—”
“You’re not” He felt her confusion, heard it in the unsteady murmur of her words. “Trust me, sweetheart. You’re a smart, spunky, pretty girl and… and I love you—”
The words came out without T.C. planning to say them. Saying them aloud shocked him. But he knew, without doubt, that he was deeply, irreversibly in love with the woman he held in his arms. He had not known the feeling of being in love, had not known what to expect, but he knew that this was it.
She didn’t speak after that. He didn’t know if she had heard him. After a while he stood with her in his arms, turned, and lowered her to the bed. Her eyes, smoky blue and pleading, looked into his.
“Don’t… leave me—”
“I’m not leaving. I’m getting a blanket.”
He lifted the long flow of damp hair and spread it out on the pillow. Her eyes followed him as he crossed the room then returned to her. He covered her with the blanket, pulling it up to her chin. Her eyes never left his face. When he sat down on the side of the bed, her hand came out from under the blanket and reached for his. She was still in shock.
With eyes wide open, she no longer looked at his face, but at the hand that was holding hers carefully so as not to irritate the scratches on the back. After a while she stopped shivering. Her eyelids finally drooped and she fell asleep.
The skinned side of her face was exposed to the light. The marks from the stick would be there for days. With trembling fingers T.C. pushed the damp hair back from her neck. He had seen plenty of cruelty before, but God in heaven, this was a different kind. Whoever did this meant to humiliate her beyond her endurance, to shame her to the point where she would cower, hide and possibly lose her reasoning.
She had not been aware, he was sure, of what she had said to him. Those words had come from the depths of her despair. For days she had held up her head and gone about the task of taking care of Doc with the threats hanging over her. No wonder she had been so desperate to leave town.
T.C. leaned over her and kissed her cheek.
“It’s over, sweetheart. You’ll not be alone again, and I promise you, I’ll find out who did this to you, and make them sorry they ever lived.”
Looking back, T.C. could recognize the signs of her panic. She had not left the house once since she had arrived. Only at his insistent urging had she gone for the walk with him that one evening. She had received the final note today, he believed, sometime after the funeral, because she had talked and laughed with some of the people during and after the meal. She had taken a woman and her child into the surgery and had given the mother some ointment for ringworm. He had heard her telling a small group of women how to rid their children of head lice.
Tonight he didn’t want to think about who had done this to her. Tomorrow was time enough for that. Tonight he was going to hold her in his arms all night long, and he didn’t care if the whole damn town knew it. He wanted her to know that she was not alone and would never be alone again.
And tomorrow he was going to marry her. Her troubles would be his troubles. He unbuckled his belt, removed his clothing except for his underdrawers, got into bed and took her into his arms. Her breasts were soft against his chest, her face fit in the curve of his neck. His hand caressed her buttock and pressed her to him. She moved, mumbled, put her arm around him and snuggled closer. Her legs were between his, her thigh tight against his sex.
The feeling he had for her now was of tenderness. He could wait for their physical mating. He wanted her to be well, to revel with him in the delight of warm bare flesh against warm bare flesh.
“Sleep, little love,” he murmured with his lips against her hair.
“Guess ya’ll have to find ya another place to sleep.”
Using buckets, Sunday and Colin had emptied the bathtub and carried the water to the porch. Now Colin straddled a kitchen chair and watched as she tidied the kitchen.
“You offerin’?” His eyes smiled into hers.
“Ha! And have that Mexican wildcat on my back?”
“She’s got no claim on me.”
“She thinks she has.”
“I know she don’t.”
Sunday hung the wet towels on a string that ran across the corner of the room. She turned, put her hands on her hips and looked him straight in the eye.
“About offerin’ ya a place in my bed. No man gets in my bed, Mr. Tallman, till his name’s tacked on the end of mine.”
“Hummm… Good point.” Colin tilted his head and appeared to be studying the matter. “I don’t know if it’d be worth the price I’d have to pay.”
“I got a notion to pull my gun and shoot ya!” she spat out angrily, but when he looked at her, she was choking with laughter.
He got up off the chair. “You got a gun on ya?”
“Damn right. I don’t go nowhere at night without one. I might meet up with a two-legged varmint wearin’ a leather shirt and knee-high moccasins.”
“Can you use it?” Colin began stalking her around the table.
“I can hit the eye outta a jackrabbit goin’ full speed.” She sidled on around to get behind a chair.
“I can do that with my eyes shut.”
“I can do it goin’ full speed standing on my head with my eyes shut.” She moved quickly when he reached for her.
His eyes went past her toward the door.
“Mrs. Henderson—”
Sunday looked over her shoulder and Colin pounced. He put his arms around her and held her against him. She struggled, but not too much.
“Dang yore hide! That’s cheatin’.”
“Yeah. And it worked.”
“What worked?”
“Caught ya, didn’t r
“Why’d ya want to do that for?”
“I think you know.”
“’Course, I do.” She was smiling at him.
“I want to kiss you. Been wantin’ to for a long while.”
“Ya’ve only known me a week or two… or three.”
“Do you ever stop talkin’?”
“Not often. But there’s a way to stop me.” Her arms slid over his shoulders and around his neck.
His hand slipped up beneath her hair and stroked the nape of her neck. She was a tall woman. He had to bend his head only slightly until his lips touched hers. She was surprised that his lips were so soft, so gentle, surprised at the pleasant drag of his whiskers on her cheek. He held her head with his hand, working his fingers through her tangled curls while his lips made little caressing movements against hers.
With a swift motion he dropped his hand to her back, pulled her tightly to him and deepened the kiss. He gave her no chance to withdraw, and she wanted none. She gave herself up to his embrace, fitting her tall, slender body into every curve of his, and returned his kiss passionately. She wanted it to go on, and it did for a long while.
The Listening Sky Page 21