Carole Howey - Sheik's Glory

by Carole Howey

  "Often enough that I believe it."

  Even if he was only her friend, she could not have asked for a better one just then. Taking a deep breath of foul air, she wedged her hands together for another assault on the mare and her dead offspring. She felt Flynn's hand on her shoulder and his lips against her temple.

  "I'm here," he whispered. "Let's finish this for Miss Mabel."

  In his words, she found the strength to continue to defy her own nature and rip the foal, piece by small, bloody, deformed piece, from the exhausted mare. Each part quickly disappeared into Flynn's sack, and each time he had a touch and a word of comfort to speak to her.

  The last thing Miss Mabel brought forth was the afterbirth, the sheltering pocket that had supported the foal for several months and had ultimately failed in its task. Missy, sick to death of blood, made herself examine the tissue to be certain nothing had been left behind. She was damned if she'd let the mare die because of a moment of carelessness after everything they'd been through together.

  When it was over, the mare gave a huff and nosed over her shoulder with a look at Missy as if to say thanks. Or thank God it's over. Then she laid her massive head down in the straw. Micah felt Miss Mabel's neck and swabbed her with a rag wrung out in warm water.

  "She's breathin' easier." Micah sounded weary but relieved. "Guess the worst is past us. She'll rest a bit now, I guess, poor girl. You done grand, as usual, Miss. I'm just sorry well, you know."

  Missy knew. She propped herself up on both hands in the soiled straw and squeezed her eyes shut. She felt like crying, but she was too wrung out. She'd cry later, she guessed. Besides, she'd always found it hard to cry in front of her help.

  "Get Rich or Jim in here to clean up," she said, and her voice sounded small and tight to her. "We'll move her back where she belongs as soon as she can stand it."

  "I know, Miss."

  "Best bury the foal and all, right here under the stall so the dogs and the flies don't get to it."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "And Mi?"

  "Ma'am?"

  "Thank you."

  "Get you to bed, Miss." The foreman shrugged off her gratitude with a gruff directive, the kind that only he could give her without feeling the sharp side of her tongue. "You've had a rough night and you won't be no good to Miss Mabel nor anybody else 'less you get some shut-eye. You too, Mr. Flynn. You're lookin' pretty done in right now."

  "And you look like you're ready to kick up your heels at a church social," Flynn retorted. Missy could not miss the note of respect mingled with the sarcasm in her partner's weary voice. Her heart, already full of grief, swelled an inch further with something approaching pride.

  Mi grunted.

  "I'll be all right," he replied, getting to his feet as if his joints no longer worked properly. "Hell, I didn't do much more'n set here with a mop and a bucket and talk myself hoarse all night. Missy's the one did the hard part. And yourself."

  There was a ring of esteem in Micah's declaration, as well. Flynn, it seemed, had passed an initiation of sorts. To Missy's surprise, there was room in her full heart for another emotion, but she was unable to put a name to it. Mi nodded to them both and ambled out of the stall with movements as wobbly as a new colt's. The colt in the sack. The one she and Miss Mabel wouldn't have to nurture.

  The pain of loss stabbed Missy unexpectedly behind her eyes.

  I can't cry yet, she thought dully, even as three drops fell from her cheeks onto the soiled straw beneath her. Not until I'm alone. They mustn't see me cry. . . .

  Behind her, Flynn let out a hard breath.

  "Oh, God." His voice shook with the very same emotion she was trying to hold back. "Are you all right?"

  She wanted nothing more, despite her soiled, wet state, than to turn to Flynn Muldaur and find comfort in his arms as she cried out her grief and her frustration. She remained where she was and took a deep, steadying breath.

  "I'll be fine." Saying it made it easier for her to believe it was so. She would be fine, eventually. Miss Mabel's dead foal would take its place in her memory of things that might have been but never were. It was a list that would keep on growing, she realized, as long as she continued to draw breath on earth. Such was life. She sighed.

  "Why don't you go on out to the trough and get cleaned up?" she suggested, not trusting herself to look at Flynn just yet. "I'll wait here until Rich comes."

  There followed a silence during which only the mare breathed.

  "Do you think I'd leave you after that?" Flynn's baritone was quiet with amazement.

  Her tears edged perilously close to the surface again but she fought them back. She said nothing.

  "Here."

  Flynn's strong hand, callused and stained with blood, appeared before her eyes. She was afraid to take it lest his touch reduce her to tears, but she doubted she possessed either the will or the strength to rise from the floor on her own. She touched only his fingers, but he closed his hand firmly about hers and helped her to her feet. She realized, eyeing his blood-soaked shirtfront, that he was much taller than she. She wondered why she'd never noticed that before.

  "I couldn't have done it without you, you know." She risked a glance at him.

  "I know." His grin was as pale as his face. Nevertheless, it bolstered her. She looked at Miss Mabel lying in the straw.

  "I suppose there's always next year."

  "I suppose."

  She stretched an ache from her shoulder that had just made its presence known.

  "Let's get cleaned up and see if Lucy has the coffee started," Flynn suggested, still holding her hand. "I don't know about you, but I could sure use a cup right about now."

  Lucy. The backache. The doctor.

  The baby!

  Missy yanked her hand from Flynn's and stumbled to the stall door in her haste. She collided with Rich, who was on his way in.

  "Whoa, Miss!" He steadied her with his hands on her arms and he met her gaze with a look of sleepy concern. "Slow down; you're in no state to be runnin'"

  "The baby," she breathed, impatient with both Rich's unhurried manner and her own weary clumsiness. "Lucy's baby. Did she have it? Is she"

  "Oh, lordy, yes!" Rich laughed as the light of understanding shone in his slow brown eyes. "She had her a fine boy, just a little while ago. He's up there to the house now, a'screamin' and a'squallin'"

  "And Lucy?" Missy breathed. "She's all right, too?"

  A grin continued to crease Rich's plain homespun face.

  "You bet she's fine," he crowed. "Micah wouldn't have it no other way."

  A hot and cold shiver swept through Missy, and she felt she had to see that live, squalling baby right away or she would burst. She didn't realize she'd voiced the wish until Rich shook her gently.

  "I think you'd best get cleaned up first, Miss," he intoned, his smile fading. "I don't expect the doc nor Lucy herself would want you near them or that baby, what with you bein' covered in horse blood and all."

  Missy looked down at her clothing. She'd known she was living evidence of the tragedy that had taken place in the stable. She could smell it and feel it all around her, drying to her and her clothing like a grotesque, unyielding second skin. Tearing the dead foal from Miss Mabel's loins had left her unfit to hold Lucy Battle's newborn son in her arms, and he was the only good thing to have come out of the awful night just passed.

  God had finally succeeded in laying a burden upon her that she was simply unable to bear.

  The Missy Cannon who broke down in Flynn's arms in the stable was not the same woman who'd fainted on him at Filson's in Louisville. She wasn't anywhere near the burden he expected when he picked her up. Either she'd shed some weight from worry or he'd gotten stronger through months of rigorous use of his muscles. Flynn suspected it was a little of both.

  ''I'm all right," she murmured, sobbing softly into his neck. "Put me down; you'll hurt yourself."

  Always thinking of someone else's welfare. The knot that slipped in his brea
st made her easier to bear rather than harder.

  "Be still, woman," he chided her, pressing a kiss into her damp, straggled hair. "I'm running things right now." And about time too, his conscience taunted him.

  There was an older man Flynn did not recognize washing up in the kitchen. Probably the doctor, he thought, shoving the door wide with his hip. He noted the stricken look on the fellow's face and deduced it must be due to the way he and Missy looked.

  "Rough night." He grunted a brief explanation as he set Missy down on a chair. "Guess Mi told you. I'm Flynn Muldaur, Missy's partner. You must be the doc. Pleased to meet you." He extended his hand, surprised that he still remembered a semblance of social graces after the endless ordeal in the stable.

  The older man mumbled something in reply including his name, which Flynn caught as Hollins.

  "I'd appreciate your looking Missy over to make sure she isn't hurt," Flynn continued. "That damned mare was pretty rough on her. She said she was fine, but you know Missy, I'm sure. I wouldn't be surprised if her arm was broken, or maybe some ribs. Miss Mabel kicked her pretty good a couple of times. I'd have liked to kick her back."

  Damn that animal, and damn everything that had brought Missy to this pass, including himself! Flynn bit down hard on his tongue to stop himself from saying anything more. He was tired too, he realized, and not thinking the way he should. But he needed to put his anger aside, or put it to some constructive purpose. Missy needed him. And by God or by hell, he'd not fail her.

  Hollins tested Missy's limp arms. Flynn was pleased to see he was gentle about it. He suspected there weren't many sawbones in Rapid City, and he didn't want to be the cause of this one's untimely demise.

  "Stay with her a minute, Doc," he said, after Hollins assured him that there were no signs of injury to her. "I'll be right back."

  Flynn's mind flooded with a list of Missy's, and the C-Bar-C's, immediate needs as he headed back out into the yard to summon Mi. There was no shortage of tasks to be undertaken. Foremost was a bath, for him and her. A close second was help of a domestic sort.

  Third was sleep. Flynn figured if he was lucky, he'd be able to take care of the first two before the third one took care of him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Missy tried to get up from the chair where Flynn had set her, but a gentle hand pressed her back into it.

  "No, you don't," a familiar, low voice, full of warmth and humor, chided her. "Everything's taken care of around here for now except you. I scrubbed up a bit, and now you're going to get a nice, warm bath."

  A bath sounded heavenly, she had to admit. But she had work to do. People who depended on her. "Gideon," she murmured. "Lucy. The baby"

  "Never you mind." Flynn was firm. "Doc set them all up fine before he left. Gideon's out fetching some more water for this sorry basin you call a tub and Lucy's resting comfortably as a queen, nursing her cub. He's a fine boy. When you're cleaned up and rested some, I'll let you see him. She named him Jedediah Flynn Micah. Can you beat that?"

  There was a singsong quality to Flynn's honey baritone that Missy found comforting. It helped dull the heartache of that lost foal. She opened her eyes at last and found her partner crouched by her chair, scrutinizing her as if he were afraid she'd try to flee if he turned his back. The notion that he wanted to keep her near, even as filthy as she was, made her feel pampered. Cherished. She liked it.

  The kitchen was comfortably warm and steamy and it smelled of fresh coffee. Missy guessed Flynn had made it. As if he'd read her mind, he held a mug out to her.

  "Drink this," he urged. "It's not as good as Lucy's, but it won't kill you."

  It wouldn't kill her, but neither would it win any prizes. Nevertheless, it tasted wonderful to her. Bitter and sweet at the same time, just the way she liked it.

  Just like Flynn himself.

  "It's good."

  "You're a pretty liar." He touched the end of her nose.

  "I'm a sight."

  "You are," he agreed with a tired but endearing grin.

  "You ought to get some sleep." Missy noticed for the first time that Flynn, while he was washed up and wearing a fresh blue cotton shirt that matched his eyes, still sported a day's growth of fair stubble on his jaw and a look of profound weariness behind his smile.

  "Pot's calling the kettle black," he teased her with an amused snort. "I got one or two things to do before I hit the sack, and the most important thing right now is to see to you."

  "Me?" Missy tried to sound gay. "I'll be fine." She attempted to get up again, but the combination of aches in her body and Flynn's strong, firm hand pressing her back completely overwhelmed her resolve.

  "You will if I have anything to say about it. Now sit still, or I swear I'll tie you to that chair with Lucy's apron strings. You're not going anywhere until I've washed you up, fed you some breakfast, and I'm ready to carry you up to bed."

  He wasn't teasing anymore. Missy tried several times to swallow a sudden thickness in her throat, without success. Since she could not reply, she was obliged to look away from his now serious countenance.

  "Think this'll be enough, Flynn?" Gideon came into the kitchen from the yard, bent over by the weight of the tin bucket that sloshed water on the pine floor.

  "Set it there on the stove to warm," Flynn answered him over his shoulder. "I'll be using that to rinse her hair. It ought to be warm enough by the time I need it, because she's going to soak a bit. Right, Miss?"

  Soak in a tub? With Flynn right there, washing her hair? Shock and excitement battled for position in her thoughts. Flynn winked at her. The expression did nothing to lessen her apprehension.

  "Stay here and talk to her while I fetch her some clean clothes for when she's done," Flynn instructed Gideon. "And don't let her move."

  Missy was vaguely annoyed that he spoke around her as if she were not even there, or as if she were incapable of understanding him. Gideon nodded, pleased, it seemed to Missy, to have been granted a proprietary office over her, for once. The boy drew a chair close to her, turned it backward, and straddled it so he faced her. He spread his arms across its back and rested his chin on his piled hands. It was evident that he intended to take his custody quite seriously.

  "Flynn said you had a rough night," he began, looking at her in that steady, penetrating way he had, as if his soul were far older than his body and mind. "I'm glad it wasn't Glory."

  Missy understood his feelings. Still, she felt compelled to remind him, "Glory isn't the only horse in the world, you know."

  Gideon shrugged. "She is for me. Did Flynn tell you about Lucy's baby?"

  Flynn, it seemed, was the font of all knowledge here at the C-Bar-C as far as Gideon was concerned. Missy found herself grinning at the boy.

  "Rich did. He knew about it before Flynn." She didn't know why that was important to her. Certainly Gideon didn't seem to care. He gave a careless shrug of one bony but broadening shoulder, as he was wont to do.

  "Flynn sent Mi to town to try and hire somebody to come out here and feed us until Lucy's up and about." He changed the subject as he studied a frayed patch on the knee of his overalls. "Ladies are sure funny about babies."

  "What do you mean?" Missy was used to Gideon's sage observations, but she never tired of listening to them. Gideon made a face.

  "They're only a messin', squallin' lot of work," he remarked. "And it seems they come into the world in a mighty hard way. But that don't stop women from takin' to them like ducks to water. It just don't make sense to me."

  Missy smiled. Put that way, it didn't make much sense to her either.

  "I don't know whether that means we get smarter, or that we just don't care anymore about how dumb we are," she offered, laying her head back and closing her eyes. "I guess the older we get, the less we try to make sense of things and we just go ahead and try to live with them."

  "Oh. You mean like you and Flynn?"

  "What have Flynn and I got to do with this?"

  He could steer a subject in
to treacherous waters quicker than a drunken sea captain.

  "Well, the two of you finally quit tryin' to figure out who was mad at who for what and just started workin' together," Gideon commented, shooting her a shrewd look. "Does that make you smart or dumb?"

  "Make yourself scarce, Gid." Flynn announced his return with authority and deposited his bundle on the kitchen table, eliminating the necessity of an answer. "There's cold biscuits and sausage for breakfast in Lucy's hamper over there. Take that and the coffeepot out to the bunkhouse for the fellas. You stick close to Rich today; I'm going to be plenty busy here until Mi gets back with some help."