The Ruby Brooch (The Celtic Brooch Trilogy) (17 page)

“He’ll be all right then.” Henry’s words formed a statement, not a question.

She didn’t deserve such faith. If he could see her shaking hands knotted in her lap, he’d have doubts instead. “Let me do what I can,” she said with false confidence.

Cullen groaned and tried to lift his head.

She pressed back on his shoulders. “Be still. I’m going to give you something for pain. Can you tell me where you hurt and what the pain feels like? Is it sharp, throbbing, burning? Can you swallow a pill?”

“Sharp. Hurts like hell in my back. I can swallow.” His raspy voice barely sounded human.

She placed a Percocet on his tongue and gave him a drink from a canteen.

“What is it?”

“Percocet.”

“Never heard . . .” His words slurred as if he’d had several shots of whiskey.

“It’s a narcotic. Give it a few minutes. It will take the edge off your pain.” Between the well-stocked medicine cabinets at MacKlenna Mansion and Scott’s medical bag, she’d collected a generous supply of painkillers and antibiotics. “Open your mouth and take this one, too.”

“What is it?”

“Ciprofloxacin.”

She pulled a stethoscope from her bag, and listened to his heart. He watched her from beneath hooded lids. “What’s on your neck? What’s on my arm?”

“Stethoscope.” She placed the chest piece in his hand. “I can hear your heart and lungs. That’s a blood pressure cuff on your arm. Your pressure is too low.”

“Why’d you go away?”

She stuck a thermometer in his mouth. “Keep this under your tongue. Don’t talk. I’m back now. It doesn’t matter.”

In his condition, she couldn’t imagine how he had stayed on a horse. And the thought of him lying in the mud made her sick at her stomach. She removed the thermometer. His fever was too high.

“I need to apologize,” he said.

“Quiet.” Before she could get the tourniquet around his arm to start an IV, he drifted off to asleep. She started an IV with saline to rehydrate him, then rolled him over, and cleaned the laceration’s jagged edge. He looked like he’d been kicked with a sharp-toed boot then raked with the spur’s rowel. The cut had been open too long to stitch. She cut away small pieces of devitalized tissue and dressed the wound. Healing would have to occur from the inside out.

Henry had done a half-decent job cleaning him up, but he still had mud in his hair. The medication took the edge off his discomfort, and the tension in his arms, neck and face seemed to ease. She pressed a light kiss on his mouth, surprised by how warm and soft his lips were.

“Get well, Cullen.”

“Kiss me again,” he mumbled.

And she did, convinced his memory would fade as quickly as the kiss.

KIT MADE A pallet in the back of the buckboard and with John’s help, Cullen hobbled to the carriage for the day’s ride across Nebraska.

He contorted his face with each step. “I’m not a damn invalid. I can ride my horse.”

Kit watched his head wobbled on his shoulders. With his eyes so glassy, it was a wonder he could see to put one foot in front of the other. Sure, he could ride. That’s what got him into this mess to begin with.

“I stayed up all night taking care of you. Either you ride in the buckboard, or John will put you back in my wagon and you can bounce across Nebraska for all I care. What do you want to do?”

“Ride with me.”

She crossed her arms and tapped her fingers against her elbows. “I’m in no mood for surliness.”

“I won’t complain.”

He probably wouldn’t complain but he’d ask questions she couldn’t answer. “Okay.”

The move from the wagon to the buckboard exhausted him. He was asleep within minutes. When he woke hours later, he appeared to be coming out of a fog, blinking rapidly to focus. She handed him two pills and held his head while he drank from a canteen.

“Better?”

He nodded and wiped away drops of water from his chin. “Where’d you go?”

“I’ve been right here.”

“During the hailstorm.”

“I found a cave about a mile from the wagons. The gully filled with water, and I got trapped inside.”

His eyes moved along her face. Her checks flushed, and she glanced away afraid she’d reveal something about herself he didn’t need to know. “I was there. At the gully. I saw a light, but I didn’t see a cave.”

The light must have been her flashlight. Should she say something? No. Ignore it and move on. She grabbed Tabor’ hairbrush and began to brush him, avoiding eye contact with Cullen. “It was a miracle I found it.”

He rubbed a small bruise on his arm made by the IV needle. She sensed a question sat on his tongue ready to roll out. Tabor meowed and jumped from her lap. The brush held globs of cat hair.

“Where’d your people come from?” Cullen asked.

She pulled hair from the brush, stalling to think. “The MacKlennas came from Scotland.”

“What year?”

“The first Thomas MacKlenna left Callander and immigrated around 1763.”

“A Highlander?”

“You’re not the only one in America.”

The corners of his mouth wrinkled with a smile that pushed into his dimples. “Aye, there are a few of us.”

“Where’s your family from?” she asked.

“I grew up around Callander, but my family immigrated to Richmond, Virginia. I’ll mention the MacKlennas to my father. We might share common ancestors.”

She swallowed a tickling of anxiety. Could he post a letter and get a response before they reached South Pass? She didn’t think so, but…

“Did Thomas MacKlenna immigrate to Kentucky.”

“He got a land grant for the original four hundred acres. Stayed and farmed for a few years, then returned to Scotland where he died. His son Thomas inherited MacKlenna Farm. That’s where I grew up. Three thousand acres of lush bluegrass.”

“Old Thomas is your grandfather?”

“Great.”
Great-great-great-great-great-great.

Cullen kept his eyes focused on hers for a beat or two. “Why’d you leave? What does Oregon offer that your farm didn’t?”

If she tried to tell him it was complicated, he might strangle her. She scratched her nose, took a breath. “I needed to get away for a while.”

“Get away?”
Suspicion dripped from his voice. “From a farm you love and still own?”

“Yes, but—”

“Don’t you dare say it’s complicated.”

“This is where our last argument ended.” She paused, took the edge off her tone, and continued. “I don’t want to fight with you. I’m not going to talk about certain topics. Either you accept that, or—”

“We keep arguing?”

“I’m not going to argue.”

He glanced at his arm and rubbed the small puncture wound. “If I ask you what you did to my arm, are you going to say it’s complicated, too?”

She gazed at his hooded eyes and sensed he already knew the answer, but that was impossible. He was asleep when she gave him the IV. She took a deep, shivery breath and said, “Yes, it’s complicated.”

Chapter Eighteen

THE WAGON TRAIN reached Chimney Rock, five hundred seventy-five miles and thirty-five exhausting days from Independence and half way to South Pass. The rock’s buff-colored, sandy clay finger was visible on the horizon and had been for the past twenty-four hours. If the little girls had asked how much farther one more time, Kit would have put them on Stormy and taken them on ahead, which would have really irritated their brothers who were just as excited to see the most famous landmark on the trail.

Henry found a level spot close to the river, and they camped in the shadow of the rock.

Frances came to the supper table with two drawings. She handed one to Kit and the other to her ma. “I drew pictures of the Chimney.”

Kit put down her fork and studied the drawing. “This is wonderful. When’d you do this?”

“Yesterday, when we were far, far away. How tall is it?”

Kit put her finger to her cheek. “Hmm, about three-hundred-and-twenty-five feet.”

John crinkled his brow. “How do you know that?”

Kit passed Frances’s drawing around the table for everyone to see. “Somebody measured its shadow, didn’t they?”

John propped the drawing up in front of him. “Well, I never heard that.”

Kit shrugged. “Maybe I’m wrong.”
Or maybe I just gave them the twenty-first century measurement.

“There’s plenty of room to carve our names. Can we, Pa?” Elizabeth asked, batting her eyelashes.

Where’d she learn to do that?

John looked over his shoulder toward the landmark, scratching his chin. When he turned back around he said, “Eat your dinner. Soon as you’ve done your chores, we’ll go see it.”

Frances pumped her fist like a champion. “
Yeah
.”

Kit put her hand to her forehead and lowered her head.
What have I done?

After dinner, John hitched the buckboard and drove the family over to the rock where he chiseled their names in the sandstone. Kit sketched a picture of the family with Chimney Rock and the pine and juniper-dotted bluffs in the background.

As an artist, she paid special attention to the dichotomy between the land’s breathtaking beauty and the unrelenting hardship they faced, and she tried to show that in the drawing’s coloring and shading. On another sheet of paper, she jotted random notes: Nebraska’s rugged beauty, Wyoming’s swales and ruts, Sweetwater River valley to South Pass, South Pass—final destination.

How in the world would she ever be able to say goodbye to the Barretts? In a short time, she had come to love them. She shook away the thought and went back to drawing. In the midst of sketching John, her fingers began to tingle, and she dropped the pencil. The man in the drawing wasn’t John. It was her father. Her head started swimming, and she fell smack into the memory of the crash. She was once again riding in the backseat of the car as it careened off the road, smashed through a fence, and into an oak tree.

“Kit, what’s the matter?” Sarah’s voice sounded garbled and distant.

“I don’t feel well…”

The next thing Kit knew she was sitting in a rocking chair back at camp with her head resting on the stenciled, wide-curved rail. John and Sarah hovered over her. “What happened?”

“You fainted.” Sarah wiped Kit’s forehead with a wet cloth.

John pulled his eyebrows into a frown. “I’ll leave you two to sort this out.” He and Sarah gazed at each for a brief moment, long enough for a conversation with their eyes. Kit glanced away feeling awkward, and if she were honest, envious.

“Tell me what happened,” Sarah asked.

“I was drawing a picture of your family, but instead of sketching John’s face, I drew my father’s. Then I was back in the car—” She stopped before she revealed too much. After a moment, she continued. “Life is so uncertain, and there're do-overs."

Sarah laid the washcloth aside and pulled a chair next to Kit. Their knees pressed together, layers of cotton softened the bone-to-bone touch. Sarah’s rough, work-worn hands patted Kit’s calloused ones. “You know what it means to be free. That’s what you feel when you ride your horse or play the guitar, but I’m not sure you understand freedom. If you did, you wouldn’t be stuck in pain’s clutch. You’re hurting. I see it in your eyes. But you’ll heal. You’ll be whole again.”

Sarah sat back in her chair with a sigh. “Your story is a tapestry with intricate detail work. Sadness is woven throughout with different shades of gray threads. It’s time to open your heart and let joy weave bright colors through your masterpiece.”

“But—”

Sarah held up her hand to silence Kit. “I can’t promise we’ll all make it to Oregon, but I promise we’ll stay together and see this through to the end. You can’t give up. Keep in your heart the knowledge that we walk
through
the valley of the shadow. We don’t stay there. Take this journey and every journey one day at a time.”

Kit wiped away her tears, overwhelmed by the depth of Sarah’s wisdom.

“Cullen should be ready for supper. Wash your face now and take him dinner. We’ll talk again.”

KIT CARRIED A plate of food to Cullen and sat on the tailgate waiting for him to wake. A low sweep of clouds reminded her of home. Sunset on the farm was like no other, especially in early fall when the cool air whipped through the trees, sprinkling a treasure of gold over the bluegrass. While she missed home, she wasn’t ready to return.

The low rumble of his voice pulled her from her thoughts. “Either I’m sicker than I thought, or something else has upset you.”

She swung around. “What makes you think something’s wrong?”

“Seen you sit there before with a straight back and square shoulders, swinging your legs. You don't look like that now.”

She stood and stepped to his side. “If you can read me so well, tell me what you see.”

He studied her face. “A woman full of life and love but afraid to live it. Afraid to feel it.”

“Ouch. Sorry I asked.”

He took the plate and set it aside, then pulled her down to sit on the bed beside him. “You're much more than you appear to be.” He traced the veins in her hand with his fingertips. “You pour gifts out on others, but you tenaciously guard your heart.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed the inside of her wrist. His warm breath sent tingles up her arms and across her shoulders. “No one can give you the reassurance you want.”

Beneath a growth of whiskers, his face had thinned, but his voice held calmness and compassion that spoke from the soul of the man enshrouded in layers of a complex personality.

“I got the same lecture from Sarah. Most of the time I’m fine, but then the grief and guilt hit me, and I feel like I’m starting all over.”

He caressed her hand. “You’re not starting over. I see healing in your eyes, which I might add, don’t have tears at the moment. And you’re not biting your lip to keep them away, either.”

Was it true? Was she really getting better? Or was she just hanging on until the next big wind sucked her into another vortex. Another big wind was on its way. Every healed bone in her body told her so.