Wayward Wind (6 page)

The fair-haired man held his hands, palms out, in front of him. “We’re sorry we frightened you, ma’am. Do what you have to
do. We’ll not hurt you.”

“Get out!”

Bonnie screamed again.

“We’ll not hurt you, ma’am,” he said again.

“Get out!” Lorna made jabbing gestures with the rifle.

“We’ll go. But for God’s sake, put the rifle down and help her!” The men started backing from the doorway.

The noises coming from the girl on the pallet were more like those of a helpless dying animal than that of a human being.

“I don’t know what else to do!” The words broke from Lorna in desperation. She fell to her knees beside Bonnie, still keeping
the end of the rifle pointed toward the doorway. “It’s killing her and I don’t know what to do!” It was an anguished cry.
“I’ve never helped birth a babe!”

Ignoring the rifle the girl clutched in her hands, Cooper stepped into the room, tossed his hat on the floor and went to kneel
down beside the girl. He’d helped to bring many a foal into the world, but had never even been near a woman when she was birthing.
There was no room in his mind for thoughts of the stolen mare. The girl had lost a lot of blood. He was sure this wasn’t the
way it was supposed to be.

“How long has she been like this?”

“It started during the night.”

Bonnie opened her eyes and her gaze shifted from the face of the blond man bending over her to the face of the second man
who moved in and gently lifted her knees so that her feet were flat on the pallet. She used his dark features as a point on
which to focus her mind while her muscles knotted and pulled as if tearing her apart. The pain rolled over her in mighty waves,
leaving her gasping and the world reeling.

“I helped with a birthin’ like this once down on the Santa Fe,” Griffin said quietly to Lorna. “We’ve got to do somethin’
quick or she’ll die.” He moved confidently in behind Bonnie and lifted her to a sitting position. “Get in front of her,” he
said to Cooper. “Get ’er up on her knees and hold her upright with your hands under her arms. Ma’am,” he spoke to Lorna without
looking at her, “strip this thing off her.”

Lorna wondered later why she had acted without hesitation and why she didn’t feel the slightest tinge of embarrassment exposing
Bonnie’s naked body to these strangers. Her grandmother always said it wasn’t decent for menfolk to be around at a time like
this. But she didn’t care. She wanted help for Bonnie and if it meant stripping her in front of these men, she’d do it. She
placed the gun on the floor beside her. When Cooper slid his hands under the shift and lifted Bonnie, she pulled it up over
her head.

“Gawddamn!”

“Godamighty!”

Both men cursed at the sight of the pitifully thin body covered with scars and bruises. Her arms flopped down at her sides
and surprise shook Cooper sharply when he saw that there was no hand at the end of one arm; it was rounded smoothly above
the wrist.

Lorna saw and unconsciously recorded in her mind the men’s reaction to Bonnie’s pitiful body and dazed condition.

“Lor… na!” Bonnie’s eyes were wild and unseeing as powerful contractions shook her and she had no control over her mind or
body.

“I’m here, Bonnie. We’ve got help, now. You’re going to be all right. It’ll be over… soon…” Lorna crooned comforting words
she didn’t believe.

“Ma’am, put ’er arms up on his shoulders.” Griffin placed his hands on Bonnie’s rock-hard abdomen. “She’s too weak to push
down. I’ll have to do it for her… when I feel it’s time.”

After several minutes, Bonnie’s screams became weaker, but they still filled the stillness with regularity.

“You’ll kill her!” Lorna gasped. “She’ll bleed to death.”

“She can’t take much more. She’ll die if we don’t get it outta her,” Griffin snapped. “Spread her legs ’n see if it’s comin’.
If it starts we’ll have to pull it out.”

Cooper never felt so helpless in his life. He felt a cold, deadly rage at whoever had mistreated this girl. To be born a cripple
was bad enough, but she had been beaten, cut, and even burned. Godamighty! The man who did this should be horse whipped! She
moaned like a wounded animal and quivered in her agony, not knowing or caring who was doing for her. Her head fell to his
shoulder and her arms clutched him, the nails of her hand digging into the skin of his neck.

“I see a… foot,” Lorna gasped.

“Ya gotta help me, girl.” Griffin spoke sharply into Bonnie’s ear. “Take a deep breath ’n push down. I know yo’re hurtin’
somethin’ awful, but ya gotta help me.” He placed his palms on the hardened mound of her abdomen and waited for another contraction.
“Hold ’er up!” he said to Cooper, and when he felt the quiver of weak muscles, he pushed down.

Bonnie was held erect and the world retreated as the crushing pain rolled over her. She sagged in the hands that held her.

“It’s just hangin’ there! Oh, God!” Lorna gagged.

“Lay ’er down,” Griffin said urgently to Cooper, and they quickly laid the unconscious girl on her back. “Straddle ’er and
hold ’er legs up ’n out.” He moved quickly, picked up a cloth, grasped the protruding feet and pulled the tiny, motionless
being from its mother’s body.

“It’s out! Oh, God—it’s dead!” Lorna gagged again.

Griffin grasped the knife, cut the cord, and tied it with the string. He began to massage Bonnie’s stomach with strong knowing
hands, and after a short time the afterbirth came with a fresh flow of blood.

Cooper’s stomach convulsed, but he managed to wrap the mass of decaying human flesh in the cloth and take it outside.

“Ma’am!” Griffin’s hand reached out to touch Lorna’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Lorna looked directly into his face for the first time and was shocked by how young he looked despite the stubble of light
brown whiskers on his face. His curly hair fell down over his forehead and his brows were wrinkled with concern. Gray-green
eyes took in the pallor of her skin, and he shook her gently.

“Get a hold on yoreself, ma’am. We got to get that mess out from under ’er ’n get ’er cleaned up. I’ll lift ’er up ’n ya pull
it out ’n put somethin’ clean there, if’n ya got it.”

“All right. I’m… sorry. Oh, I’m so glad you came. I… couldn’t have done what you did. She’d have died!”

“She ain’t out a the woods—”

“You think she’ll die?” Lorna asked fearfully.

“I don’t know,” he said gently, and lifted the pale and exhausted girl. “She’s been through the fires a hell ’n she ain’t
strong. I could see that right off.”

“How did you know what to do?”

“I helped another fellow with a Mexican woman down in Santa Fe. She was a stronger woman…” He left his words hanging. “This
one’s just skin and bones,” he said softly, laying her gently down on the clean bedding and pulling a clean sheet up over
her. “You want me to go out while you wash ’er up?”

“Not unless you want to.” Lorna brought a pan of warm water to the bedside. “It was so awful.”

“Where’s her man?”

Lorna glanced at him. He was bathing the sweat from Bonnie’s face. “She doesn’t have one,” she said tersely.

“Who did this to her?”

“It was a dirty, low-down hunk of crowbait who’s not fit to be called a man. Bonnie’s folks sold her to him because she’s
a cripple!” Frustrated, frightened and angry, Lorna fairly shouted the words.

The man, who was not much more than a boy, gazed down at the still face of the girl. Finally he spoke, and his muttered words
barely reached Lorna’s ears. “Poor little thing,” he whispered sadly. His eyes moved over her quiet face and down to the arm
that lay at her side. He picked it up and lightly caressed the handless stump with his fingertips. “Ya been alivin’ in hell,
ain’t ya?”

Something in his voice and the sad look on his face caught at Lorna’s heartstrings. She burst into tears, stood, and slipped
out the door to stand with her arm against the cabin wall and her face against it. Racking sobs shook her and she cried as
she had not done in many years.

Cooper heard the sound of the woman weeping before he rounded the corner of the house.
The young girl had died!
He wasn’t surprised. The poor thing had gone through too much. He’d like to get his hands on the sonofabitch who’d misused
her. He wondered what connection Lorna had with the girl. She was crying her heart out. He went up to her and put a comforting
hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

Lorna jumped as if he had touched her with fire. She whirled in a crouched position, her head thrust forward, her moccasined
feet planted firmly on the ground. She jerked at the knife she wore in the sash at her waist and glared up at him, her eyes
as bright and as furious as those of a treed bobcat.

“Don’t touch me! Don’t you
dare
touch me, you… horny, rutting swine!” she snarled. “I despise you and your kind. Bonnie’ll die because of men like you!”

Cooper backed away. This small black-haired woman was set to fight him! She couldn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds
dripping wet, yet she held the knife as if she was determined to use it. The silence between them seemed to crackle as though
each generated a violent lightning storm. Neither of them moved nor spoke for what seemed an endless space of time. He stared
at her, all his senses completely absorbed in her, as if he were wrapped tightly together with her in an invisible cocoon.
A tightness grew in Cooper’s chest and a numbness came up his neck and rendered him speechless. For an instant, in a small
part of his brain, there was a flicker of recognition. It was as if somewhere in time, he had known this woman well. Her face
and form were not strange to him, nor were her feelings. The mood would pass in an instant. Knowing that, he waited.

The anger left Lorna as quickly as it had come. She had been unreasonably unfair and she knew it. She looked at the tall,
fair-haired man with unabashed curiosity. He was whiplash thin, yet the muscles of his shoulders, arms and thighs bulged his
buckskins. His hips were lean and he wore a gun strapped below his waist, as did most men. But he wore a bowie knife, too.
Both knife scabbard and gun holster were tied down. His light sandy hair was straight and thick, his eyes a clear sky blue.
There was an amazing quietness about him.

“I’m… sorry. It was mean of me to blame you for what happened to Bonnie. My name is Lorna.” She tucked the knife in her belt
and held out her hand.

“Cooper Parnell.” Cooper took the step necessary to reach her hand and clasped it firmly. “I understand how you feel,” he
murmured, and meant it.

Her level brows lifted and her eyes widened slightly. As her features mirrored her changing moods, he felt as if the whole
of her character lay quite near the surface. Frankly and openly, observing each detail, she looked him over from the top of
his head to the toes of his dusty, well-worn boots. Never before had he undergone such a close scrutiny from a woman. It was
done openly, and impersonally.

“What did you do with… it?”

Her words jarred him back to reality and it took a few seconds for him to answer. “I buried it deep and rolled a rock over
it.”

“Thank you.”

“Ma’am? That girl’s been mistreated something awful. Name the one that did it and if I cross his path I’ll give him a taste
of what he gave that girl.”

“Bonnie and I thank you, Mr. Parnell, but I’ll take care of it. He’ll pay.” She looked Cooper steadily in the eye.

He liked the way she stood; her feet planted solidly on the ground, her slim figure erect, head up, shoulders back. Pride
showed in the tilt of her chin. She’d made a statement of fact. It was no idle threat. He believed her, and deep within him
something warm and sweet grew strong and tall.

“Where do you come from?” he asked, but he was thinking, What a woman. What a glorious, wonderful woman!

She was turning away, but she said over her shoulder, “From Light’s Mountain.”

Evening came and still Cooper hadn’t mentioned the reason he and Griffin had come to the cabin. He chopped a supply of wood
for the small fireplace and carried fresh water up from the stream. The girl, Bonnie, lay on the pallet as still as death,
her face almost as white as the sheet that covered her. Late in the afternoon she had opened her eyes, sought Lorna’s face,
then reassured, wearily closed them again. Griffin and Lorna had taken turns sitting beside her, making sure she was covered,
even in the warm room. Griffin had said that due to the loss of blood she might chill. Cooper had came to realize that the
young nester had more than a normal amount of doctoring knowledge and wondered where he had learned it.

“Mr. Parnell.” Lorna came out of the cabin when Cooper brought the two horses up and tied them to the corral posts. “Are you
leaving?”

“I hadn’t thought to, ma’am, not till some of your folks come to help you with the woman. If it’s all right we’ll put our
horses in the corral and camp down by the creek.”

“I’m obliged to you for staying.” She walked past him toward the pole corral, lowered the bar gate, and went into the shed.
She shoved aside a door at the back of the shed revealing a cave in the cliff, and whistled softly. Cooper heard an answering
nicker and a big, gray horse with a white streak that extended from beneath its forelock to its nose came to her and nuzzled
her shoulder. She patted the sides of its big face and murmured unintelligible words into the straight, peaked ears that twitched
back and forth.

A second horse moved out of the shadowy cave and Lorna went to it, rubbed its nose and then slipped her arms around its neck.
She talked to it, making soft little sounds. The horse bobbed its head up and down, almost lifting her light body off the
ground. Then, holding it by its mane, she led the second horse out into the light.

Cooper had been leaning against the cabin wall. He straightened and blinked in surprise. Goddamn! It was
his
mare she was leading from the cave! A wave of sickness rolled over him.
She
was the thief! But—His mare was only half broken in, and she was leading this one out of the corral and down to the creek
with only a handhold on her mane. The gray followed closely behind her, giving her shoulder an affectionate nudge from time
to time.