Enchanted Heart (26 page)

So, as she had always known in her heart, there was love for both of them, there was a path that they would both take and hopefully happiness was their ultimate journey’s end. With knowledge of their disease and hope for the future of their children, Marty was certain that she and Greta would have happy new lives. She knew deep in her soul that God would not descend so many tragedies upon them without eventually rewarding them for their patience and faith.

Life has a way of renewing itself. With a smile on her face, she mentally repeated the musing that she had reflected upon while holding Baby Jake what seemed like ages ago.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

After leaving Marty and Greta in the safe hands of young Daniel, Caid McAllister hurried the wagon train onward without further incident. The four remaining families rode and trudged through the valleys and up the mountains of Central Texas until finally, the terrain became flat again. Flurries drifted on the canvas covers of the wagons, but he pushed them onward, fearing that even more snow would stop their progress. Being stuck in a snow bank or a frozen river was no place to find one’s self during the harsh winter that he knew was on the way toward them. Besides, the sooner he got back to the cave with a doctor the better.

He tugged on his coat collar and whistled to the lead wagon, waving it forward when he saw the San Saba River and Fort Concho just beyond the bubbling body of water. And although the coming blizzard brought whipping winds and freezing temperatures, the wagons rolled through it without stopping. It proved quite easy to traverse the river in order to reach the fort and the settlers’ new home since the snow had not yet filled its banks with rising drifts that would have kept the heavy wagons just shy of their destination until the snow melted in the spring.

A few miles south of the fort, there was a flurry of progress in the building of the new businesses that would make up Ben Ficklin, a town started by the man himself. Staring at the progress of the town, Caid thought of his former boss. Born in 1827, a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and a hero of the Mexican war, Ben Ficklin had helped establish stagecoach and mail routes involving the Pony Express across the United States, and had come to Texas when he’d started the mail route from Fort Smith, Arkansas to California. He’d bought the land that is now the town, some six hundred and forty acres and established a stagecoach and mail stop there and he’d expected the town to thrive as the stop between El Paso and San Antonio. Caid McAllister had met Ben when he’d signed up to ride in the Pony Express across Texas and was proud to call him a friend. He looked forward to seeing Ben again as he spurred the stallion into motion.

At Fort Concho, the settlers planned to wait until most of the town was finished and, in the meantime, they would build their own homes. Colonel Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, the Colonel in charge at the fort, promised Caid that he would look after the settlers, but he refused to let the only doctor that they had leave them. So Caid left the families in the care of Colonel Mackenzie and his friend Ben and then he headed back to Marty and her injured sister, hoping that Greta would live long enough for him to go to Fredericksburg where he hoped help was waiting.

The driving snow hindered his passage back to the cave, but he pressed onward, motivated by the love in his heart. When he finally stepped into the cave six days later, he was astonished to find the note written in charcoal on the wall and not the woman that he loved. But he was glad that she had told him where to find them and that they were both alive, at least they were at the time she had written the note. The next morning, he followed the map’s directions to the cabin and twelve hours later, he thought that he had found her at last when he rode into the snow-covered yard.

The small log cabin looked abandoned and Caid wondered if he had taken a wrong turn at the bottom of the last mountain. Surveying the yard and searching through the dense forest of cedar and oak trees that encircled the cabin for signs of life, he leaned forward on the saddle and yelled, “Hello!”

His answer came in a combination of the distant bellowing of a mockingbird that whistled a warning to the intruder who dared to invade its territory, the skittering scrapes of a squirrel that scurried for a better limb to hide behind, and the faint babbling of a stream beyond the crevasse that lay deep in the woods.

Then silence prevailed. Peace and tranquility was all that seemed to exist in the quaint hideaway where a tiny cabin waited for company but with no smoke whispering a welcome.

After craning his head waiting for a human reply, he lowered his tall frame from his horse and stamped the snow from his boots before stepping onto the plank porch on the side of the tiny house. The spurs on his heels clanked noisily, breaking the silence of the surrounding trees, causing a flurry of feathered creatures to flap away in fear. He dusted off the window and pressed his head to the glass but it was too dark inside to see if it was inhabited. He walked across the plank porch to the door and lifted his hand to knock. But when he noticed the paper that had been nailed there, he stopped with his fist frozen in the air. His heart raced when he read her name at the bottom of the page.

Concentrating on the words that Marty had written, Caid failed to hear the soft, moccasin-covered footfalls of the creeping Comanche warrior. The red man crouched at the edge of the porch, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce on the unsuspecting intruder. The long Bowie knife in the Indian’s hand cast a shimmering line on the door in front of Caid, yet its gleaming glow did not catch his attention.

“Damn,” Caid whispered when he discovered that he had missed her again. He lowered the paper, swiped the newly purchased Stetson from his head and scratched his confusion away while the stalking Comanche inched closer to him.

He stuffed the letter into his vest pocket next to the delicate ribbon that he had pulled from Marty’s braid and then turned to remount and to reunite the silky strip of cloth with its owner. As he took a step forward, he heard a growl that started out low and menacing like the rumbling snarl of a wolf and then rose to a high-pitched yelp before the Indian threw himself into Caid’s chest, sending him crashing against the door of the cabin.

Caid reached for the pistol that normally rested on his hip but now hung in the holster across the horn of his saddle. He let out a grumbling roar when the breath returned to his aching lungs and he heaved himself against the Indian’s body. His boots scraped across the wooden planks as he fought for footing and finding it, he pushed the young brave until he sailed off the porch and onto the snow-covered ground. He opened his mouth to speak, to assure the Comanche that he did not want to fight, but he heard a yelp from behind him, so he turned to face his next assailant.

Rising Sun saw his brother writhing in pain on the ground and anger filled his heart while he raised the knife in his hand and hurled himself at the intruder with deadly force. The white man’s reflexes were quick enough to ward off the attack, but not fast enough to deflect the slashing blade of the knife that sliced through his heavy coat and into the flesh on his left shoulder.

Resisting the urge to clutch his palm to the gaping wound, Caid raised his hands in an effort to catch the young Comanche brave who threw his red, screaming body toward him again. Twisting and hurling, the two fell onto the ground beside the other Indian, dowsing him with cold, wet snow and giving him the tenacity to continue the fight. Together, the brothers wielded their sharp knives and pounding fists upon the stranger who yelled his confounded anger at them.

Sometimes hitting flesh and sometimes flying into empty air, the man’s attempt at stopping them from stabbing and striking him was moot until, frustrated and exhausted, Caid screamed at them in the language that he thought they would understand, "Ich bin nicht hier zu kämpfen!”

Hearing the German-spoken words, the brothers ceased their attack so suddenly that Caid’s flailing fists landed on the opened mouth of one of the young men who stared incredulously at him. Long moments passed while the brothers looked at each other and then down at Caid and then back to each other.

“Easy now,” he said in English as he rolled to his hands and knees and away from the two confused Indians. “I’m not here to fight,” Caid repeated the statement that had caught their attention before, but in his native tongue.

Getting to his feet, Caid told them in a calm and assuring voice, “I’m looking for two women with red hair. One is hurt, the other one’s willing to kill.”

Rising Sun immediately remembered the daring flaming haired woman who had the audacity to challenge him and his brother and he stood up straight and proud and announced in English, “Not here.”

“What do you mean they’re not here?” Caid asked angrily while he looked to the Indians for answers.

Remembering that Buck had told him to be on the lookout for a man in search of the two women, Rising Sun told the stranger that his father had taken them to town and then, with a little remorse in his voice, he was the first to admit to Caid that they had made a mistake in assaulting him.

“Well that doesn’t change the fact that you two beat the daylights out of me and filled me full of holes, does it?” Caid complained angrily at the two who clambered to get him to his feet and into the cabin.

Together, they laid him on Buck’s bed where only weeks ago, Greta had healed, and they dressed his wounds. Then, they stood above him and stared at him as if he would tell them what to do next.

Caid groaned in pain, but mustered the fortitude to demand that they bring him food and a blanket, not necessarily in that order. The two young braves stumbled around the room, running into each other in their hurried attempt to make the man comfortable and to make up for their mistakes. Hunts-with-a-knife fetched the bag that had been left behind by the doctor who had used it to save the ailing woman. He handed it to his brother, who took it and rummaged around for the tools that he could use to heal the stranger. Mimicking Buck’s actions, the young man stitched the bleeding wounds and then bandaged them with linen. Then the brothers took turns sitting with him for weeks while his body healed and while the snow piled up in chest-deep drifts outside the small cabin.

Rising Sun sat next to the bed, spooning broth into Caid’s mouth and encouraging him to swallow. He knew that this stranger was the strong, red-haired woman’s man and, for some baffling reason, he feared her retribution more than that of the injured intruder. His mission in life at that time was to make the man well and deliver him to her—the sooner, the better. After a few spoonfuls, Caid turned his head violently and groaned, “Enough!”

“You eat soup, get well. Find your Fire Woman,” Rising Sun said in broken English as he tipped the spoon up to Caid’s lips again.

Caid knew that the young man was talking about Marty with her flame-red hair when he had called her Fire Woman, for it was the name that the boys had given her after the first day that they had met her and they had told him the story of her bravery against them after Daniel was accidentally killed. But to Caid, the name indicated another meaning. To him, it meant that she evoked a fire in his heart and his body each time that he looked at her, each time that he took her into his arms.

His heated thoughts were chased away by Rising Sun’s words, “Tomorrow, you walk. Next day, you walk again.”

“I know, Rising Sun,” Caid told him as he sipped at the spoon and then let his head fall back onto the pillow. “The sooner I get up the sooner I can get going.”

Rising Sun shook his head with a frown and insisted, “We will miss you, Aiden Kincaid. You remind us of our father.”

“Your father, huh?” Caid asked with a raised brow. He almost corrected the young man by reminding him that his last name was McAllister, but he didn’t mind being referred to by his grandfather’s name, from which his nickname was derived, so he kept his mouth shut.

“He is strong and,” Rising Sun paused to find the word but he could not think of what he wanted to say, so he hunched his shoulders and curled his arms in front of his body like a grizzly bear while scrunching his face up into the expression of wrath.

“Mean?” Caid asked with growing annoyance.

“Not mean,” Rising Sun said with a shake of his braided head.

“Gewaltig,” Hunts-with-a-knife interjected in German as he leaned on the hearth. He spoke better German than English and therefore, felt more comfortable in that language, which is why he rarely spoke at all.

“He says our father is formidable,” Rising Sun explained when Caid could not remember the translation to the word. “Sometimes he is terrifying, like when he punished us for shooting the white boy.”

Caid rose up onto his elbows to look at the young man and asked, “Does your father beat you?”

Rising Sun shook his head and started to say something, but Hunts-with-a-knife pushed away from the mantle and said sternly, “No!”

When he stepped toward the bed where Caid lay, Hunts-with-a-knife’s face was a mask of sadness and he lowered his head while his brother explained, “His words hurt.”

Caid softened his voice and in a fatherly fashion, he said, “Well, a father has to be firm with his sons. Boys can be hard to raise and sometimes they need to be put in their place.”

“We know,” said Rising Sun as he stood over him with his arms folded in front of his chest. “But, when a boy loves his father so much, it hurts to hear him speak such angry words to him.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Caid lowered his head. He wondered if his father would have loved him as much as their father seemed to love them, if he would have stayed around. He cleared his throat and pushed back that thought as he tried to explain, “He does it because he loves you two so much. Some day, when you are fathers, you will understand.”

They both nodded as if they comprehended his words in their hearts. Hunts-with-a-knife eased his stance and then pulled up the rocking chair and stared at Caid so long that the older man looked to Rising Sun for an explanation.