Now and Forever (11 page)

Tucker wondered if he should be taking notes about how to handle women. “Mind that you don’t look at my wife without her clothes on.”

Smiling even wider, Aaron set the plate on the table, then went to the door, stood off to the side so he was looking at the barn and not the water, and yelled, “Kylie, Shannon, get in here. Tucker’s runnin’ a fever.”

Aaron swung the door shut. “Let’s get that shirt down off your shoulders. Then I’ll drape something over you, up high. Kylie doesn’t need to be seeing a whole bunch of you.”

“I’d prefer that myself. I liked living alone in the mountains. Never had to deal with all these people.”

Aaron helped arrange Tucker’s clothing and took another look at the wound. “That bear did some damage. I think I’ll heat water—we need to wash it better.”

Shannon rushed into the cabin within minutes, dressed but with her hair dripping. Kylie came in only a step behind. Tucker realized his vision was fuzzy as both women looked square at him. Shannon’s eyes dropped to his uncovered stomach. She gasped in horror. Kylie shrieked.

“Kylie, you hadn’t ought to be looking at me.” Tucker pulled the blanket over himself. There was only about a foot of his middle uncovered, but it was indecent. No
woman had ever seen so much of him, for heaven’s sake. Not even Ma, leastways not since he’d been a tyke.

Aaron caught his wife by the shoulders and physically turned her away.

“What happened?” Shannon rushed to Tucker’s side and pushed back the blanket.

Tucker had a mind to keep himself covered, but she overpowered him.

“Had . . . had to be the grizz.” It was harder to talk than it oughta be. Tucker shrugged, which now caused a tearing pain in his gut. “How come I hurt now, but didn’t so much before—except for my leg?”

“Hot water.” Shannon snapped out an order that’d make General Grant straighten up and salute.

Aaron moved to the fireplace. “It’s not boiling yet.”

“Bring me what you’ve got and then heat some more. It’s close enough for now. I had plenty of soldiers with infected wounds. We can take care of this.” She sounded sure, though Tucker read the pure panic in her eyes.

“Ma went to get medicine.”

Shannon got a strange look in her eyes. “How long ago did you notice it?”

“We . . . uh . . . noticed it when he got out of the river. Sunrise said he had a fever, told us to put him to bed, then went for some medicine. No sense calling to you before you were ready to come in. You couldn’t touch him until you’d had a bath.” Aaron using Coulter’s excuse. Quick thinking.

Shannon’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t say anything. Tucker wasn’t a dishonest man, but if he was going to tell
something less than the complete truth, he needed to be mighty sneaky about it.

Lesson learned. His mind chased that lesson in a lazy circle, and he felt as if the circle became a long cave that grew more and more narrow and dark.

Aaron was at Shannon’s side with a basin of steaming water. The room became so dark, he reckoned they must be back in the coal cave.

“No, we’re in my cabin.” She was answering questions he only thought in his head. That struck Tucker as being mighty handy, especially when a man was overly tired.

She leaned close. Tucker heard a scrape as Aaron set the basin on something. A table maybe. Was there a table?

“Yes, there’s a table.”

Shannon answered another question he’d only thought. Tucker wanted her to lean even closer. Close enough he could steal a kiss, and he was afraid to think what else he wanted from her. He didn’t touch her for fear he might get a slap across the face.

Then hot, hot, hot. She pressed burning embers into his belly. He tried to stop her. Something clamped on his wrists.

“We need to open the wound.”

Open the wound sounded bad.

“It’s suppurated. We need to drain it, get it to bleed.” Shannon’s voice was kind, but unless she had four hands, it wasn’t her holding his wrists. Yet he thought she had two heads, so maybe she had four hands?

Two restraining him, two more torturing him with embers.

“No embers, Tucker. We need to . . .”

“We should wait for Sunrise.” Aaron said that.

Sunrise? Was the sun rising? Or did Masterson think they should put this off until tomorrow morning? Tucker was all for waiting. This was going to hurt, and he’d as soon put off any more hurting. Tucker realized in some distant way that he wasn’t fully conscious anymore.

Then Ma was back. His ma, Sunrise. That reminded him of something, but he wasn’t sure what.

There was a fuss over trying to get him to drink or sit up or he wasn’t sure just what. It didn’t seem important, because all he could think was that he needed to rest and they wouldn’t quit pestering him.

At least Ma was here to stop these two from hurting him. That was a mercy. And that was when he saw her pull her knife. Ma had taught him to use a stone to put on an edge. No one kept a blade sharper. There was a blinding gleam as she held it up to the lantern. It was so wicked, so lethal, it caught the light and flashed in his eyes. She looked at his belly and lowered that dagger straight at his gut.

He fought their grip. Then he felt something that made those burning embers a distant, almost happy memory. Shannon had his face in both her hands, and she was talking, trying to get his attention. Something deep inside him pulled, dragged him down into a darkness as black as pitch . . . as black as a cave.

Shannon kept talking and hurting him at the same time. He wasn’t all that happy with his new wife. She was turning out to have a mean streak. But he decided then and there
he’d let her do whatever nasty things to him she wanted to, because stopping her was just too much trouble.

The blackness was a weight he couldn’t cast off, so he quit trying. After a day of thinking he’d gotten out of that blasted cave, he dived in deeper and let it bury him.

H
e passed out.” Shannon let the tears fall now that she didn’t have to be brave for Tucker. “How could I not check for wounds? I knew he’d been attacked by that bear. Of course she clawed him. If he dies, it’ll be my fault. I should have—”

“Hush.” Sunrise reached a strong, steady hand across Tucker’s unconscious body. Aaron had pulled the bed out from the wall, so Shannon could be on that side to help hold him down. He’d held Tucker’s arms. Nev had come back in time to hold his legs, hard to do with the broken leg, but Nev had done well. It was all to keep Tucker from hurting Sunrise or himself as she’d cut open the vividly swollen wounds to release the suppuration.

Now Shannon looked Sunrise right in the eyes and, as she did so, realized Sunrise was Tucker’s mother in all the ways that mattered. Sunrise stood there with that bloody knife, opening her son’s wounds, listening to him scream, watching him fight, knowing she was causing him agony.
As hard as this was for Shannon, it had to be a hundred times harder for Sunrise, who loved him with a mother’s heart. Yet Sunrise did what needed doing.

Something else occurred to her. Sunrise was now Shannon’s mother, too. And Shannon hadn’t had a mother in a long time.

“The fall off the cliff, the ride down the river. Waking up in a dark cave, badly battered. The blood first washed away by hours in the water, then later dried black. When would you notice a few scratches? If you had noticed, what would you have done about it? We will waste no more time with talk of fault. We will work instead to make him well.”

Swallowing her guilt, Shannon managed a firm nod of agreement. “Sunrise and I will be busy with the wound. Aaron, if you and Nev and Kylie could put the cast on his leg, that would help.”

Shannon saw something ease in Nev’s eyes. He was a troubled man. Given to nightmares, something she knew. He slept in a small cabin near Kylie and Aaron’s place. Kylie talked of Nev’s tormented nights. He had gained probably fifteen pounds since he’d come out west, and still he was gaunt from his time in a Union Army prison camp. From his expression she knew it helped him to be needed and she really did need him.

Shannon soaked rags in water so hot her fingers had turned bright red. She laid them over the oozing slashes, soaked up the blood and infection, then rinsed out the rags and did it all over again.

Nev mixed the plaster while Kylie tore up strips of cloth
and Aaron wrapped Tucker’s leg to protect the skin before the plaster went on.

Sunrise bathed Tucker’s forehead and arms and chest with cool water to ease his fever, her lips moving in prayer. Shannon had been told that Sunrise had found faith in God through missionaries who worked with the Shoshone people. Now her steadiness came as much from God as from her knowledge of natural healing remedies.

All five of them kept busy. The cast was a long time being wrapped to Nev’s satisfaction. Shannon was glad he was here. She’d seen it done but never had to handle such a thing alone.

By the time he was finished, Tucker’s wounds were bleeding clean. Nev asked to be able to check it. Shannon straightened away from Tucker’s side, and after so long a time in a bent posture, the pain in her back nearly knocked her over. Only quick action from Aaron kept her from falling. He smiled down at her as he set her on her feet.

Kylie came and slid her arm around Shannon. “Are you all right? You’ve been through almost as much as Tucker.”

Shannon looked down at her battered husband. “I don’t come even close.”

“I suppose you’re right. Even so, get some rest and let Aaron and me take turns sitting up with him.”

“No, I’ll never sleep for worrying, you know how I am. It’s like one of my sheep is lost.”

Kylie smiled. “That bad?”

“Yep. So there’s no reason for us both to be awake.”

Aaron rested a hand on the small of Kylie’s back. “There’s a new man in town taking over for me as land
agent. I need to talk to him. I’ll bring Kylie and Nev back in the morning to help.”

“Thank you.” Shannon really did like the man who had married her little sister. She knew this new land agent was part of Aaron arranging to move back east to the Shenandoah Valley, where he’d grown up. Shannon would miss her sister, but Kylie longed to live in a more settled part of the country, and Aaron wanted to go home. Shannon was happy for them.

Once they were gone, Sunrise urged Shannon to lie down for a while. She finally agreed, knowing she was worn clean out.

Arranging a bedroll on the floor, Shannon closed her eyes, yet sleep would not come. After almost an hour, even Sunrise admitted it was foolish for Shannon to twist and turn while Sunrise sat up.

Shannon promised to let Sunrise know if her roiling thoughts ever settled and sleep became possible.

Through the darkest hours of the night, she bathed Tucker’s brow countless times to fight the fever. Praying her meager medicine would be enough, watching his every breath. It was approaching dawn when his eyes fluttered open.

With only a single lantern, turned low to light the room, she was reminded sharply of the similarities between this moment and the days they’d spent alone together in the dark cave. The intimacy that had been forged between them was alive.

She brushed his hair off his brow. It was short, cut off by Sunrise about a month ago to little more than bristles.

“How are you feeling?” She leaned close, hoping not to
wake Sunrise, though Shannon doubted the alert Shoshone woman slept through much.

“Like my leg’s clamped in the jaws of a badger, my belly’s on fire, and my head’s being used as a war drum.”

Nodding, Shannon resisted the urge to press her lips to his forehead. That seemed like how a wife ought to test a husband’s temperature. “You need water. A fever wears on a man. Let me help you sit up.”

She slid a hand behind his shoulders. Raising him an inch at a time, watching every flicker on his face, she saw, though he tried not to let it show, that each move was agony for him.

A tin cup of water was close at hand. “Take a sip. Just one. If it stays down you can have another.”

Tucker did as he was told. She urged him to take another longer drink, and it wasn’t long before the cup was completely drained.

“Enough. Thank you.”

“I can get more.” She spoke with her face close to his, holding him up as she was, her lips nearly touching his cheek.

“No, that’s good for now.”

As she eased him back, he gasped and one hand went to his stomach.

Shannon quickly caught his hand. “Don’t. We didn’t cover the wound. We wanted a new scab to form and left it unwrapped.”

“How can I hurt so bad when I didn’t even notice I’d been clawed before?”

“Well, it’s because we made it worse. We opened the wound to get . . .” Shannon’s voice broke.

Tucker turned his hand—the one she’d grabbed—so he held hers and drew it up to his lips. “Don’t cry.”

Gently sliding her arm out from behind his back, she swiped at her face with the back of her wrist. That he would comfort her when they’d done such brutal doctoring on him was unfair.

“You’re going to hurt badly for a while and will need lots of care. But at least your leg is in a cast now.”

Tucker turned to look down the length of the bed. “It feels better.”

“It helps to keep it from moving. They called it ‘immobilizing’ the leg or arm. We used plaster in the war, and the pain relief of a plaster cast was almost immediate.”

Tucker stared at his foot, and Shannon saw him wiggling his toes.

“You’ll need to be still and have good food and a lot of rest for a while. Sunrise says being still doesn’t come easily to you, and she’s about the only one who can make you mind.”

Tucker grinned and kissed her hand again.

Shannon suspected they all had their work cut out for them keeping Tucker in bed until he was better. She jabbed a finger straight at his nose. “You’ll do it if I have to wrap your whole body in plaster.”

He arched his brows as if daring her.

She decided to put off fighting with him until he actually started moving again. Right now his tender stomach would keep him still. “Now drink this tea. It will help with the fever.”

Shannon reached for a second cup that Sunrise had prepared and left on the table.

Tucker drank it down quick.

“Can you eat anything? There’s stew left over.”

Shaking his head, Tucker said, “I don’t think my belly’s up to that right now. Instead I’ll get to the resting part of Sunrise’s orders.” His eyelids closed as if they weighed five pounds each.

He fell asleep so suddenly it was almost as if he’d passed out again. But his breathing was steady. A hand on her shoulder scared her into jumping.

Sunrise stood behind her. She’d approached without Shannon hearing a sound, then pressed one hand to Tucker’s forehead and smiled. “He is going to be all right.”

The assurance in Sunrise’s voice released a knot of tension that Shannon hadn’t really known was there.

“Sleep, daughter.” A quiet, somber woman, her smiles were rare. And she’d called Shannon daughter. “His fever is low enough we can let him sleep without the cool baths for a time. Tomorrow we will both need our strength to keep him in bed.”

Nodding, Shannon stood, took a wistful look at her husband. She hadn’t slept away from Tucker in five long days. How quickly she’d gotten used to him.

“It would be fine to lie beside him. You can do him no harm, and he might find comfort in your presence.”

“Thank you.” Shannon didn’t know if she could sleep anywhere else.