The Kissing Stars (27 page)

“She’s alive, son. She has a gash on the side of her head, and this kind of wound bleeds a lot.”

“She’ll be okay, though, won’t she?”

Gabe cleared his voice to speak. “I won’t lie to you, Will. She’s unconscious and that may be simply from the gash on her head or it might be something worse. I can’t tell much more without getting her out of here.”

A silent moment passed as the boy absorbed the news. Then he asked, “What about Twinkle?”

“I think she’ll be all right,” Gabe replied, relieved to see stirring that signified the older woman was coming to. “Any sign of Captain Robards or his men?”

“None, sir.”

Hell. Gabe tried to figure out what to do next. Ordinarily he was a quick thinking man, but the sight of Tess’s blood made his mind as sharp as cornmeal mush.

“What are we going to do, sir? Do you need the ladder?”

Ladder? “What ladder?”

“The rope ladder Twinkle keeps up in Castor’s riding basket in case Pollux gets ornery about kneeling down. She does that sometimes.”

God bless that saliva-spittin’ dromedary. “That’s just what we need, son. Good thinking.”

By the time Will sent the rope ladder unrolling into the coach’s interior, Twinkle had awakened enough to help hoist herself up and through the doorway. She sat on the side of the coach while Gabe hurriedly followed and assisted her to the ground. Leaving Will to settle her beside the woozy Colonel Wilhoit, Gabe hurried back to Tess. She was still unconscious.

He knew that moving an injured person sometimes caused added harm, but he didn’t see that he had a choice. “Honey, I’m going to get you out of here now. Hang on and I’ll have you settled in a minute.”

Holding Tess over his shoulder, he climbed from the coach. Will spread a blanket beside the spring and Gabe gently lowered her to the ground. He dipped his kerchief into the water, washed the blood from her face, then gently dabbed at the wound. Rosie plopped down beside the blanket, and Gabe would have sworn she looked worried.

“Are you going to stitch her up?” Will asked, his voice quavering.

“Not in this lifetime.” Gabe’s mouth dipped into a grimace at the thought. The very idea of poking her flesh with a needle had him breaking out in a sweat. “It’s not bleeding so much now; I think it will be all right. She’ll be all right.”
Please, God, let her be all right
.

With Gabe kneeling on her right side and Will seated cross-legged on her left, they began their uneasy vigil. Helplessness clawed at Gabe and he continued to bathe her face. He never left her side, sending the boy to check on Twinkle and the colonel and to climb the butte to look for signs of Robards and his men.

Confounded Rangers. What the hell were they up to anyway? Riding ahead. They hadn’t needed to ride ahead. They just wanted to get away from the camels and Twinkle’s singing. Gabe had heard Robards say it himself.
When I go to revamp the Texas Rangers, I’ll see Robards transferred to the middle of nowhere
. The feet the man was already stationed in the middle of nowhere might complicate the task, but Gabe would by God see it done. “You know why they call West Texas God’s country, son?”

“No, sir.”

“Because no one else would have it.”

The boy shot him a quizzical look. “What does that have to do with my mother?”

“I don’t know. Nothing. Never mind me, son.” Gabe was getting punchy with worry.

A few minutes later Twinkle and the colonel staggered over. Both looked very much the worse for wear and, except for advice, had little assistance available to give. Not that Gabe wanted any. It was his place to care for his wife. His and Will’s.

Gabe’s concern grew at a steady pace. It was past time for her to wake up. “Tess, enough of this now,” he told her, holding the hand of her uninjured arm in one of his, stroking it with the other. “Come on, honey. Wake up. It’s time. It isn’t good for you to sleep so long.”

He was tempted to pinch her cheeks to put some color in her pasty complexion. He wanted to shake her and scream at her to just wake up, dammit. “Open those eyes, darlin’. Please, sweetheart. You’re scaring me.”

“Please Mama. Do like he says.” Will’s voice trailed away to almost nothing as he added, “I don’t want to be an orphan.”

“You won’t be an orphan!” he snapped.

“But if Mama dies…”

“Tess isn’t going to die and you won’t be an orphan. Now, no more of that kind of talk, you hear?”

Gabe dampened the kerchief again, then trailed it across Tess’s face. “Wake up, Tess. I need to see those beautiful blue eyes. I need you. Our son needs you. I love you, Tess. I always have and I always will. Did you hear that? I love you. Now open those eyes and glare at me for saying it. I love you, darlin’. I love you.”

Tess’s eyelids twitched and Gabe held his breath, praying for them to lift. Nothing happened at first, but then they twitched again. Had they lifted halfway or had he imagined it? “There! Did you see that, Will?”

When the boy didn’t answer, Gabe flashed him a glance. Will wasn’t looking at his mother. He was staring straight at Gabe, his gaze narrow and sharp enough to shave with. “You’re him, aren’t you?” he accused, betrayal shining in his eyes. “You are my father.”

CHAPTER 15

“YOU ARE MY FATHER!”

Will’s bitter words pierced the haze of pain and confusion clouding Tess’s mind.
Oh, no. Not like this. He shouldn’t have found out this way
.

Her wits returning in the face of her son’s distress, she ignored her throbbing muscles and pounding headache and forced herself to put aside the burning concern she felt for her friends’ safety. She opened her eyes, wanting desperately to reach for her son and hold him, to talk to him and explain. To tell him how much she loved him.

Neither male noticed their gazes locked upon one another, the air between them sizzling with tension and emotion.

Tess’s heart gave a wrench. She had wanted to tell Will herself, or at least be cognizant enough to moderate the event. But now it was too late. Will had figured it out.

You are my father
.

She’d never heard such rancor in her son’s tone. A sense of urgency battled the drum corps playing in her head, and Tess tried to figure out what to do. It was so hard to think. Opening her mouth and speaking seemed an insurmountable problem.

But then, maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it was best that the two men in her life work out this situation by themselves. She allowed her eyes to shut and she listened.

“You’re not Whip Montana,” Will accused “You are Gabe Cameron.”

Tension added an edge to Gabe’s firm voice. “I am your father, Will. But my name is Montana now. I’ve been going by it since before you were born.”

“Why?”

The heartbreak Tess heard in that single word hurt her worse than the pain radiating in her head Gabe took a long time to respond forcing a curious Tess to peek at him through her lashes. Frustration hardened his jaw, but his eyes—oh, his eyes—held such anguish.
Oh, Gabe
. She wanted to reach out and squeeze his hand in comfort.

Gabe’s voice was raspy with emotion when he spoke. “Just which
why
are you asking, son? I can think of at least a dozen.
Why
did I give up my name?
Why
did I give up your mother?
Why
haven’t I been around to be your father?”

Will scrambled to his feet sending puffs of red dust billowing in little angry clouds. He clenched his hands at his sides so hard his knuckles turned white. With every word he spoke, his voice got a little louder, a little more desperate. “How about why the hell don’t you get away from my mother!
Why
the hell don’t you get out of here. We don’t need you. And don’t you ever call me son again. You changed your name. Well I’m changing my father. Doc is my father, the only father I want. You just saddle up and ride on out of here, mister. We don’t need you!”

“Now hold it right there,” Gabe snapped back.

Hearing the temper in her husband’s tone, Tess decided to interrupt before the situation got out of hand. So she let out a little groan and gained both her husband’s and her son’s full attention. “Mama?” Will said. He dropped back onto his knees beside her.

“Tess?” Hovering over her, Gabe gently laid his hand against her cheek. “Tess, are you finally waking up?”

Bright sunlight stabbed like a cactus thorn when she fully opened her eyes so she shut them again almost immediately. “Oh, my head” she moaned, not needing to exaggerate her condition at all. She tried to sit up but both the pain in her head and the males in her life forced her to lie back down. A moment later, she again gathered her wits enough to ask, “What about Twinkle and the colonel?”

“They’re all right,” Will assured her. “Banged up a bit, but nothing too serious. The colonel’s ankle hurts and Twinkle is seeing to that.”

Relieved she asked about the accident, and Gabe described the broken wagon axle and how the coach had rolled. “You were out a good five minutes. You probably have a concussion.”

“Well, what are you, a doctor, too?” Will grumbled.

Gabe sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. The epitome of patience, he said, “You’ve a cut on your head—that’s where all the blood came from. That’s all I could tell. Do you hurt anywhere else, darlin’?”

Will’s chin went up and out. His eyes narrowed pugnaciously. “Don’t call her that. Her name is Tess. She is not your
darlin’
.”

“Yes, she is.”

The boy’s nostrils flared and his brow dipped into a fearsome scowl. “You are no hero, Whip Montana. You’re a sorry sonofagun.”

“Will, please.” Tess struggled to sit up, ignoring Gabe’s insistence that she stay put. Her head thrumming from the effort, she added, “Don’t be like this.”

“Like what?” He glowered at Gabe.

Then, the words flowing naturally, if ill-advisedly, from her tongue, she said, “Don’t sass your father.”

For the span of a heartbeat, Will froze. Then he shot her a look brimming with betrayal, and turned his head away. Rejecting her.

Tears welled up inside of Tess and despite her efforts to contain them, spilled from her eyes. Her whimper must have escaped, too, because Will darted a glance her way, then flinched guiltily. For just a moment she thought he might melt, but then the flame of anger rekindled in his eyes. “I’ve gotta go check on Rosie.”

With that, he rolled to his feet and darted away.

The boy is so much like his father
. Tess grimaced and looked to Gabe for something—support or comfort. She wasn’t sure what.

What her husband offered wasn’t it. “That bump on the head scrambled your brains even harder than I thought. Do you realize what you just said?”

“Yes.” She sighed heavily and allowed him to wipe away her tears with his handkerchief. “But he said it first.”

“You were awake?” The handkerchief slipped from his grasp. “You woke up and didn’t tell us? Why, Tess that was downright cruel.”

She stared at the white square of cloth lying in her lap and said, “The damage had already been done by the time I realized what was happening. He’s devastated. This is just what I was afraid would happen if he wasn’t properly prepared. Oh, Gabe, I’m afraid this accident broke more than an axle.”

“What is it?” Worry colored his tone. “Your arm? An ankle?”

“It broke Will’s heart.”

“Ah, darlin’.” Gabe sat behind her, pulled her back against him and wrapped his arms around her.

This was what Tess had wanted, him holding her. “Everything has happened so fast. I intended to tell him myself, to answer all his questions before he had the chance to stew on them. He likes you, Gabe. I watched the two of you together. If we could have done this right, he wouldn’t have been so…”

“Mad as hell with the hide off,” her husband’s drawl rumbled in her ears.

Tess’s head hurt, her muscles hurt, and her heart hurt as she recalled the last fuming glare Will sent her way before running off. “I don’t know what to do now.”

“We let him cool off,” Gabe replied matter-of-factly. “We give him time to work the anger off.”

“Are you sure?”

“Believe me, I’m an expert on the subject of being filled with fury toward your father.”

“True.” After a moment’s pause she added, “I hope he doesn’t take as long as you to get over a grudge. Aren’t you worried that the old tenet ‘Like father, like son’ might come into play here?”

“No,” he snapped. The muscles in his arms went hard. “I’m not. I didn’t kill anyone Will loves.”

Tess melted back against him. She felt just bad enough not to pick and choose her words, but spoke straight from her heart. “No, but in your son’s eyes, you weren’t there when he needed you. I never said a word against you, Gabe. Actually, I seldom talked about you much at all. It hurt too much. I answered what questions Will asked, but he undoubtedly had plenty more running through his mind that he didn’t voice. He came up with his own answers, and now that he has figured out who you are before being told the why of everything, it’s those perceptions we will have to overcome.”

“You’re saying Will hates me like I hate Monty Cameron?”

“I’m saying your son is almost as confused as you are where his father is concerned. You don’t hate Monty, Gabe. You’re angry at him and you’ve nursed that anger for years and years. It is my most fervent hope that once you meet with Doc and rant and rave until you’ve said everything you’ve wanted to say all this time, you’ll be able to listen to what Doc has to say and forgive him.”

“Forgive him?” Gabe gave a harsh laugh and moved away from Tess. He gently laid her back on the quilt, then stood and began to pace back and forth along the creek bed. He grumbled beneath his breath for a number of minutes. Then abruptly, he stopped “Darlin’, aren’t you forgetting something? The man you want me to forgive more than likely broke a murderer out of prison, set up his own kidnapping, and allowed our son to travel across forty miles of desert all by himself to deliver a lie that led directly to the cut on your head and the spills Twinkle and Jasper suffered. Tell me, is that something you want me to forgive? Honestly, now?”

“We don’t know that Doc is guilty. We don’t know he’s the one who wants you to deliver the gold.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t know for certain it won’t snow in the Chihuahuan today, but it’s a damn good guess.”

Tess didn’t argue any further. She blamed her reticence on her husband but in all honesty, her own niggling doubts had something to do with it, too.

“Listen, Tess,” Gabe said. “None of that matters right now. Doc is not our immediate concern, Will is.”

Tess prodded gingerly at the gash on her head. “I think you’re right about how to deal with him. The best thing to do is to do nothing for now. Until we settle the situation with Doc, ask our questions and get our answers, we can’t settle our problems with one another. The way I see it, everything hinges on Doc.”

Gabe knelt beside her and cleansed the cut once more, then braided the hair around it tightly in the old Indian way for pulling the scalp together. Then, he stood once more, his legs spread wide and his hands braced firmly on his hips. “Everything hinges on Doc, you say?” he repeated. “Then, by God, let’s go find the sonofabitch.”

THEY SPENT an hour salvaging supplies from the coach and setting up camp. Colonel Wilhoit appeared to have broken a rib and one knee was swollen to twice its normal size. In his condition he could sit neither horse nor camel, so Gabe decided to leave him and Tess here in camp with Twinkle to care for them. He and the boy would ride ahead toting the gold and keeping a sharp lookout for Jimmy Wayne Bodine and Doc.

While Tess attempted to sleep off her headache, Gabe gave Twinkle instructions for what to tell Captain Robards if Gabe and his son somehow missed the Rangers along the trail toward the rendezvous spot Bodine had specified. “We need one of the lawmen to ride back to Eagle Gulch and secure another coach and horses for the injured folks’ trip home,” he told the older woman. “I’m not chasing our runaway; he’s long gone at this point. Robards and his other man can catch up with us. If we’re lucky, Andrew will have fetched my friend Mack by now and they’ll ride this direction. You can fill them in on the developments.”

Twinkle agreed to the plan and Will voiced no objections. Of course, since Will wasn’t speaking to Gabe that came as no surprise.

Knowing Tess as well as he did, Gabe chose to leave camp while she was sleeping. Despite her best efforts, not even Tess was hardheaded enough to overcome her injuries well enough to keep up. The accident had cost them time, and they’d need to ride hard to reach Dagger Mesa by Bodine’s deadline.

Gabe rode out of camp followed by Will riding his sorrel mare and guiding the gold-toting Pollux by a rope lead. Will listened to the instructions Gabe gave him and followed directions, but never once did he reply. Gabe didn’t press the issue. Tess was probably right. Get the Monty situation taken care of first, gather all the facts and separate them from the feelings, and then perhaps the other problems would solve themselves. At the very least, Gabe figured he’d have a better grasp on where he stood with his son once he had a chat with Monty.

What had the old sonofabitch told Will about Gabe? What dreams had the boy entertained about his father all these years? What dreams had today’s ill-timed revelation destroyed?

With those hard questions on his mind and his silent son at his back, Gabe spurred his horse and increased their pace. They rode toward a dark and ominous range of mountains whose sharp red peaks rose into the sky like the jagged, rusted teeth of an extremely large steel trap.

He grimaced at the thought and hoped the image wasn’t a portent of things to come.

They’d been riding an hour when Gabe spied a puff of dust on the trail ahead. Riders, coming fast.

He reined his mount to a halt, then pointed toward a jumble of boulders off to the left. “Will, take cover in those rocks.”

His son spoke his first words in hours. Of course they were words of argument. “But I don’t see why—”

“Now, boy!” Gabe’s voice ricocheted like a bullet off the surrounding rocks, and with a glare, Will did as he was told.

Moments later Gabe identified the approaching riders as Captain Robards and his men, and blessed relief washed over him. He’d known from the beginning he didn’t like having his son along on this adventure, but it wasn’t until this moment that he realized how truly scared he was at the idea of Will meeting up with Jimmy Wayne Bodine. Immediately, he started thinking of ways to protect the boy.

The Rangers reined in their horses beside Gabe. He briefly explained about the accident and Robards immediately sent one of his men off with instructions to check on Tess and the others, then return to Eagle Gulch to obtain transportation for the injured. With that handled, the discussion turned toward Bodine.

“We’ve located the rendezvous spot. Tell you what, Montana, Jimmy Wayne Bodine might be a vicious criminal, but he’s about as sharp as a marble. The place is up a steep, narrow trail. A footpath. Damned near inaccessible. No way are we going to get the gold up there. We’ll have to leave it somewhere before we make contact with Bodine.”

“But that’s against his instructions,” Will protested, having abandoned his cover when the Rangers rode up.