The Texan (24 page)

Owen knew she was totally unconscious of the picture
she presented. With her arms up, her breasts were jutting against the soft cotton T-shirt, and he couldn’t help remembering how nicely they’d fit into his palms.

“I need something to do,” Bay complained.

“I can think of something to keep us busy, but I’m not sure you’ll want to do it.”

“Name it,” she said.

Owen knew what he wanted to do. It started with slipping that T-shirt off over her head and ended with him inside her. Considering everything, he decided that wasn’t such a good idea right now. “We can do an inventory of these boxes and see what’s inside them,” he said. “Maybe we can figure out where they all came from.”

“Wonderful idea!” A moment later, Bay was headed for the stack of munitions boxes.

“You’ve sure got a lot of energy.”

“I told you. I’m going crazy doing nothing.” She turned when she reached the boxes and said, “What about something to write on? Have you seen a paper or pen?”

Owen shook his head. “Neither one. Which leads me to believe they don’t hang around here much.”

“They drop off the stolen goods and run, huh?”

“Yeah,” Owen said thoughtfully. “Whoever stuck all these mines here doesn’t live a long way off, not if they have to get here often. Since this is about the most remote place you can be in Texas, it figures that even if the mines were stolen from stockpiles all over the United States, the thief—or thieves—live in Texas.”

“What makes you think the mines were stolen from a lot of different places?” Bay said. “Is there something on the boxes to tell you—”

“If this many mines had been stolen in Texas, the
Texas Rangers would’ve known about it. Which means they came from out of state. The army probably investigated on its own—if it noticed the thefts—but they might also have involved the FBI or the ATF.”

“Hard to believe someone could steal this much truly dangerous stuff and not get caught.”

“Part of the problem might be that the army—and whichever federal law enforcement agencies are helping them out—is keeping the whole thing under wraps, so they don’t frighten the public.”

“I see what you mean. I’d hate to worry about another Oklahoma City bombing happening in my hometown.”

“While the local police have been kept in the dark, the government might very well have told the Texas state attorney general what was going on. Knowing Clay, when those VX mines got stolen right from under his nose, he threw himself into the thick of things.”

“I hope you’re right.” Bay sighed. “How are we going to keep track of what’s what without pen and paper?”

“You can carve notches in one of those crates with your knife,” Owen said.

Bay grinned. “I have to say that appeals to my sense of adventure. It’s like we’re marooned on a desert island somewhere. Just the two of us. We could be here for years and years.”

“I hope not,” Owen said. “We’ve only got about a week’s worth of food.”

Bay stared at him. “That’s not much at all. Are you sure that’s all we have?”

“Did I mention there’s less than two weeks’ worth of water?”

“When did you figure all this out?” Bay asked irritably.

“What happened to your spirit of adventure? The two of us alone on a desert island?”

“My island has
water
,” she said flatly.

“I don’t think we’re going to be alone here very long.”

Bay looked transfixed. “Who is it you think will be coming here?”

“The bad guys, of course.”

“We don’t have anything to defend ourselves with. Just my knife and your pistol.”

“Sure we do.” Owen pointed to the stack of boxes. “We just have to figure out how to use them to our advantage.”

Owen was far less sanguine about their chances of surviving than he’d led Bay to believe. But there was no sense scaring her. Better to let her play
Survivor
and hope for the best.

They spent the next five days doing an inventory of the weapons, deciding which mines to set and how to lay them so no innocent person would be hurt by accident. They spent the nights sitting near a wood fire they made using broken-up mine crates, telling stories and singing silly camp songs.

As the week wore on, instead of feeling better, Owen felt worse. He started to wonder if maybe he’d gotten a larger dose of VX gas than he’d thought. His back and his legs ached. He felt feverish and lost his appetite.

He hid his condition from Bay, hoping he would get better. On the morning of the sixth day, Owen couldn’t rise from his cot.

When Bay returned from her morning trip to the bushes, smiled at him and said, “Rise and shine, lazybones,” he opened his eyes and croaked, “Can’t do it, Red. Too sick.”

•    •    •

BAY WAS BENDING OVER OWEN A MOMENT LATER, A PALM
on his forehead. “You’re burning up with fever! How long have you been sick?”

“Few days,” he muttered.

“How many days?” she insisted. “Where does it hurt?”

“My back. My legs. All over.”

“Men!” she said in disgust. “You’re such stupid creatures. Why couldn’t you have told me you weren’t feeling well? Why do you have to put on this macho act until you’re so sick you can’t move?”

“No sense worrying you,” he said. “If it’s the gas, there’s nothing you can do to save me.”

“If it was the gas making you sick, I’d be sick, too. More likely, we’d both be dead!” Bay dragged Owen’s shirt off over his head and said, “Turn over.”

Bay saw the problem immediately. Red streaks radiated from three of the four Band-Aids on his back. “These wounds are infected. What I need is penicillin. And we don’t have any.”

“See. Wouldn’t have made any difference if I’d said something sooner.”

“I might have been able to cut out whatever was causing the infection and cut out the infection along with it, if you’d told me sooner,” Bay said angrily. “You said your legs hurt, too. Get those camouflage pants off, so I can take a look.”

“This isn’t the way I pictured getting naked for you,” he said.

Bay was terrified when she realized he was too weak even to sit up and pull off his pants. She shoved his hands out of the way and unsnapped and unzipped his camouflage trousers and pulled them off.

As she’d suspected, two of the wounds in his calves where she’d pulled out lechuguilla spines had also become infected.

“You’re a mess!” she said. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Bury me?” Owen quipped.

“If you weren’t in such bad shape, I’d make you pay for that,” Bay said. “I can use hot cloths to soften these wounds enough to drain them. But I don’t think that’s going to be enough.”

“I don’t suppose you did a paper on this?” Owen asked.

“Don’t be ridicu—” Bay stopped herself and smiled. “I did! Oh, if I can just remember. It was a paper on herbal remedies. You wouldn’t believe how many desert plants are antimicrobial.”

“Give it to me in English,” Owen said.

“You can crush the seeds and boil the bark and make an antiseptic that can be used directly on the wound. Or I can make a tea you can drink. There are poultices to help with the inflammation and to draw out poisons,” she said excitedly. “If I can just remember which herbs are used for what.”

“I’m sure if you put your mind to it—”

“What if I’m wrong?” Bay interrupted. “What if I give you a remedy that doesn’t work? Or one that’s meant to cure something that isn’t wrong with you?”

“So what? A couple of wrong things won’t matter as long as you give me at least some of the right thing. What can you remember?”

“Mesquite, because it’s so common in South Texas. I think it has to be dried, or you have to use gum from the trunk, and I’m not sure I can get what I need soon enough to do you any good. But I think the pods can be boiled for tea.”

“All right. One mesquite tea,” Owen said, as though he were ordering from a menu in a restaurant. “What else?”

“Catclaw…” Bay hesitated. “Catclaw something.”

“Cactus?” Owen suggested.

“Not cactus. I remember thinking at the time it must be a mistake, because it’s a different word than cactus.”

“Acacia,” Owen said. “There’s catclaw acacia.”

“That’s it!” Bay said. “That works like mesquite. But it doesn’t have to be dried first.”

“I’ve seen some of that around here. I can describe it for you.”

“Good. I think sage has some medicinal value, too.”

“You know what that looks like?”

“Yes, I do.” Bay put her fingers to her temples. “Oh, I wish I could remember exactly what to do.”

Owen laid his hand on her thigh. “Go out and hunt your herbs, Red. Or should I call you ‘Medicine Woman’?”

Bay laughed through the tears that were blurring her vision. “Let’s wait and see how you feel after you’ve been dosed with a few of my remedies.”

She started to rise, but he tightened his hold to keep her in place. When she met his gaze he said, “Thanks for taking care of me, Red. I mean … considering everything.”

She lifted a brow. “You mean, considering you’re a Blackthorne, and I’m a Creed?”

“Yeah. That’s what I mean.”

“This doesn’t change anything, Owen.” The shorter, more affectionate name wouldn’t come out. Last night things had gotten too familiar … too frightening. So
she’d taken a step back. “We still live on opposite sides of the fence.”

“We could both move.”

She stared at him in confusion. “What?”

“I said I have to stay in Texas to be a Ranger. I didn’t say I had to stay in Bitter Creek. I wouldn’t mind moving to the Hill Country near Fredericksburg. How about you?”

She rose and said, “Maybe you ought to make sure you’re going to live, before you start planning to pick up stakes and move halfway across the state.”

“Bring on the tea,” Owen said. “I’ll swallow whatever you put in front of me.”

Bay smiled. “Be careful what you wish for. Some of these remedies are liable to taste like what they are—bark and leaves.”

Owen was cursing loudly long before she’d finished washing out his wounds with a mesquite concoction made from leaves, twigs, bark, and pods boiled in water.

“That hurts like the devil!” he complained.

“You shouldn’t have hidden the fact you weren’t feeling well. It would have been a lot simpler to treat you before you got so sick.”

He nearly came off the cot when she applied a boiled poultice of flowering white sage to his back. “Too hot?” she asked sweetly.

“No,” he said through gritted teeth.

“I need to go collect some catclaw acacia. Will you be all right?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Owen said.

It was surprisingly difficult for Bay to collect the leaves and seed pods she needed from the catclaw acacia,
because the stems were covered with “catclaws,” which looked like rose thorns and were twice as sharp. Bay had a few wounds of her own before she was done.

She crushed the green leaves and pods with a stone and threw them into a pot of boiling water to brew cat-claw acacia tea. When it was done, she brought a cup to Owen.

“Can you turn over by yourself?” She was surprised at the effort it took him to do so. She feared he was much sicker than he’d let on, and that he really needed a hospital and a people doctor. “I’ll help you sit up,” she said.

“I can do it.”

In the end, he couldn’t. Bay didn’t lecture him, merely put a hand on an unwounded part of his back and helped push him into a sitting position.

When he tried to take the cup from her she said, “Let me help. I don’t want to have to start over collecting this stuff. That catclaw acacia fights back.”

He drank the tea, making faces as he did.

“How does it taste?” she asked.

“Like leaves and bark.”

Bay smiled. “I told you so.”

When he had drunk the whole cup, Bay helped him lie back down on his stomach. “I want to keep hot poultices on your back until I see some of the swelling and redness go away.”

It was a sign of just how sick he was that he didn’t argue.

By dawn the next morning, his calves were looking much better. But Bay conceded that no amount of hot poultices was going to force out the broken-off spikes that were the source of the infection in Owen’s back. His skin was red and tender to the touch. Despite the teas she’d forced down his throat, his fever was raging. If she
didn’t act soon, Owen would end up with gangrene. Then it would be too late to do anything but watch him die.

She sighed heavily.

“What is it?” Owen asked as he turned his head in her direction.

She dabbed away the sweat on his forehead with a torn piece of an army-green T-shirt. “I didn’t know you were awake.”

“I just woke up,” he said in a slurred voice. “What’s wrong?”

“I need to cut out the spikes in your back.”

He ran his tongue along dry lips and said, “I figured that was coming.”

“Well?”

“I’ve been trying to imagine a scenario where we get rescued in the next day or so. I don’t think that’s going to happen. If you think it’ll help, Red, maybe you better make like a doctor and operate.”

“I don’t have any anesthetic,” she said. “You’re going to feel it when I start cutting. I know there’s some desert plant that would make you sleepy, but I’ve tried and tried, and I can’t remember what it is.”

“Don’t worry, Red. I’ll be fine,” Owen said. “Maybe you ought to get me something to bite on, so I don’t make you slice too deep by screaming at the wrong moment.”

“You’re not helping by making jokes,” she snapped.

“I wasn’t joking.”

“Oh.” Bay’s hands were shaking by the time she’d cut a piece of sotol, a desert plant with long stems that could be turned into walking sticks, for Owen to bite down on.

“Why so nervous, Red?” Owen said. “You’re qualified to do surgery, aren’t you?”

“On animals,” she said. “In an operating theater. With
surgical instruments and enough anesthesia to ensure the patient suffers no pain. I’m going to be using a jackknife to cut into you, for God’s sake!”

“Think of the alternative. If you don’t operate, I’m going to die a slow, lingering—and very smelly—death from gangrene.”

“When you put it that way, I suppose I have no choice,” she said acerbically.