Witch Dance (18 page)

“By rubbing them with mutton grease and ashes? How can I keep a sterile environment if you bring that filthy stuff into my clinic? I will not tolerate it.”

“Kate.” Eagle touched her elbow, but she stepped away and faced him with her back ramrod-straight and her face stiff. “I’d like to talk to the shaman. Alone.”

For a moment she looked as if she might protest; then she relented.

“Fine. But don’t make any compromises on my behalf. This clinic is under my jurisdiction. He is
not
to interfere with my patients again.”

Picking up her charts, Kate marched out of the reception room like a drum majorette in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. When she rounded the corner, her resolve failed, and she leaned against the wall with her hand against her throat.

Eagle was just on the other side of the door, formidable and delicious. Her pulse thrummed against her palm. Once he had touched her there, kissed her there. She could still feel his lips upon her skin.

Oh, God. How would she survive this second invasion of him?

She ran a hand over her tired face then went into the clinic, where all her little patients lay in a quiet row. “Any change?” she asked Deborah.

“None. You’ve been gone only thirty minutes, Kate.”

“It seems like hours. Damned that old medicine man. I hope he sets his tail feathers on fire in one of his sacred rituals.”

“Eagle will convince him to leave us alone.”

Kate’s eyes narrowed. “You called him, didn’t you?”

“Somebody had to keep you out of trouble.”

“Go home, Deborah, before I turn my Irish temper on you.”

“You’re exhausted, Kate. I can stay.”

“No. It’s my shift tonight.” Besides, Eagle Mingo was in the clinic. She couldn’t bear to see him, and she couldn’t bear to walk away.

She gazed across the room at the little beds. “When all this is over, I think I’ll ride through Witch Dance naked, screaming at the top of my lungs.”

“Me too. Both of us deserve it.” Deborah got her coat. “Good night, Kate.”

“ ‘Night.”

Kate was at the supply cabinet, doling out medicine, when Eagle entered the room. She didn’t hear him so much as feel him. He still moved like a shadow, dark and silent and beautiful. She gripped the edge of the table to stop her hands from trembling.

She was too old and too wise now to cite fatigue or nerves as the cause. There was only one cause, and its name was Eagle.

“Kate.” She turned to face him, holding the medicine tray between them. “The shaman will not be back. . .”

She didn’t give him the satisfaction of asking how he’d accomplished what she couldn’t in the last three days.

“Good,” she said.

“. . . unless the parents request him. The medicine man still carries great honor in our culture, Kate. I’m sure you can find a way to respect that and still care for your patients.”

“What I’ll find a way to do is make damned sure the parents don’t request him. Not in my clinic.”

“You haven’t lost your spirit.” His voice seduced her.

Damn you to hell, Eagle Mingo.

“Did you think I would?”

“No.” His fierce gaze pinned her to the spot, and he made love to her with his eyes. “I always loved that about you.”

“Don’t . . .” She wheeled away from him and started toward the beds, then, not wanting to appear cowardly, she turned back. “Bucky and Mary Doe will be glad to see you. There’s no change in them.”

“And the others?”

“I’m afraid for them.”

“Only the foolish are never afraid

“So you once said.” She tipped her chin back, daring him to try to resurrect old memories.

“I’ve brought them something, if you think that’s all right.”

“Anything to brighten their day.”

Moving quickly, she put distance between them. She could feel his movement across the room, as liquid as honey.

“Look, I brought you some magic,” he said as he knelt beside his nephew’s bed.

Kate’s hand tightened on the medicine tray.
Always, Eagle brought magic
.

“How is it magic, Uncle Eagle?” Bucky asked.

“Hold it up to the moonlight, like this.” He held the small round buckeye toward the light so its hard shiny surface glowed. “Then rub it and you’ll remember all the good times you’ve ever had.”

Her knuckles turned white. She didn’t want to remember. Forcing herself to move slowly, she set down the medicine tray and escaped into the bathroom. Leaning against the door, she could still hear his voice as he moved from bed to bed, explaining the magic of the buckeye.

She closed her eyes and whispered, “Damn you, Eagle Mingo. Damn you.”

Her face burned, and her body.
Coward
. Hiding in the bathroom. She couldn’t hide forever.

Kate dashed cool water over her face then hurried back to her duties. All her tiny patients were asleep except little Lolly Turner. She was clutching the buckeye in her frail fist when Kate approached her bed.

“I can’t remember, Dr. Kate.” Tears spilled from under her closed lids and rolled down her flushed cheeks. “I rubbed and rubbed . . . but I . . . can’t remember.”

“It’s all right, sweetheart. I’ll remember for you.” Kate felt the pulse, weak and thready. Alarmed, she strapped on the cuff. Blood pressure ninety-seven over fifty and falling.

Lolly had been failing for the past three days. Kate pushed down the panic that threatened to swamp her. In all her seven years at Witch Dance, she’d never lost a patient except old Mrs. Weems, and she’d been ninety-seven. She didn’t intend to start now.

“Remember the birthday party you had when you were five? Your daddy gave you a pony.” A weak smile played around the child’s pale blue lips.

Don’t die, Lolly.
Don’t die.

“And remember that time you fell out of your tree house and got a cast on your leg and you had so many friends you asked me to put on a larger one so they could all sign it?”

I brought you into the world, precious child. I won’t let you leave it.

Lolly’s only response was a flutter of her eyelids. Kate tried to find her pulse, tried to find her pressure. Her vital signs were off the chart.

“And remember when you started school? You asked me if I had any pills that would make you remember the ABCs?” Kate talked rapidly. If she talked fast enough, she could keep death at bay. If she talked long enough, she could bring Lolly back.

Come back, Lolly. Please come back.

The buckeye fell from Lolly’s lifeless hand and rolled across the floor. Swiftly and silently Eagle moved to her side.

Kate put the paddles to Lolly’s chest. “Remember how you wanted to be a doctor, Lolly?” Flat line. “Come on. Remember!” Kate applied the paddles once more. “You have to remember.”

Flat line.

Eagle put both hands on her shoulders.

“Kate . . . come away.”

“I won’t let her die,” she said, applying the paddles once more.

“Kate . . . she’s gone.”

Fierce and defiant, she turned to him. “How do you know? You’re not the doctor,”

“It’s no use, Kate. She’s been weighed in the path and found light.”

“She was just a child . . . she was just a child.”

Wild with grief and defeat, Kate ran from the room. In her office she crumpled into her chair. Eagle came in behind her and switched on the lights.

“I want the lights off,” she said.

He flicked off the switch, and she huddled in her silent cocoon of blackness, feeling the electric presence of Eagle Mingo as he stood beside the door.

“Leave. I want to be alone.”

“You need me, Kate.”

“I stopped needing you a long time ago.”

Her heart beat so hard, she could almost hear it in the silence of the room. For a small eternity he stood beside the door, and then he moved on the wings of eagles. His large shadow fell over her, and even in the blackness she was comforted.

“At least take this for your tears.” He pulled a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and offered it without touching her.

“I’m not crying.”

“Then allow me to stop all this water, for the Blue River has left its banks and is flooding your eyes.” He knelt beside her and tenderly wiped her cheeks.

With his hands finally upon her, the thing she remembered most was not making love with the stars overhead, but swimming in the river naked with the sun on her face and Eagle sitting on a big rock, singing to her in Muskogean.

She let her tears flow freely, and, kneeling, he wiped them all away. And when she gave one final sniffle, he backed off, severing the fragile tie that bound them.

“Is the buckeye really magic?” she whispered.

“Only to those who believe.”

She looked into his deep black eyes and saw only emptiness. Silently he folded the handkerchief and pressed it into her hands while the humming silence became a roar.

“In case you need it,” he said, then turned quickly and left the room. The door closed softly behind him.

Kate slumped in her chair. Neither of them believed in magic anymore.

Chapter 19

Fox squirrels and rabbits and deer were abundant in the mountains, hiding amid the fallen tree branches and the colored leaves, waiting for him to take his twenty-gauge shotgun and hunt them down.

But Clint had no heart for hunting. He had no heart for anything. His brother and sister were dreadfully sick, and he was well.

He felt guilty.

Home was not the same without Bucky and Mary Doe, and neither were his mother and father. Anna cried a lot and Cole was angry. They were in the kitchen now, fighting.

Clint tried not to hear. He pressed his hands over his ears, but the hateful words came to him anyhow. “Three are already dead, Anna.”

“I know. . . I know. Still, I think it would be wrong to get the medicine man.”

“Kate Malone’s medicine is not enough.”

“His ways are old-fashioned, Cole.”

“Hers aren’t working:”

“I will not have that dirty old shaman shaking gourd rattlers over my children!”

“Would you have them die? Would you, Anna?”

His mother ran from the kitchen crying, and Clint raced upstairs to his room. He turned the music on really loud, but it didn’t drown out the sound of his mother’s grief.

 o0o

Mick wiped tears from his eyes. One of them dropped on the letter. He tried to wipe it off before it smeared the ink, but he was too late.

“Dammit all to hell,” he muttered. Now Martha would find out that he read Kate’s letters.

Not that she didn’t already know. Every time a letter came, she pussyfooted around the house, looking at him like a dying calf in a hailstorm, sighing and knitting. She’d knitted enough damned doilies to cover Texas. He hated the things, stuck on all the arms of the chairs, just waiting for him to knock them off on the floor or spill coffee or drop ashes on them.

When she’d run out of furniture arms, she framed the damned silly things and hung them all over the walls.

“Mick?”

He hastily stuffed the letter into his pocket. He’d take it to his office and pretend the maid threw it away.

“Are you ready, sweetheart? We don’t want to be late to the opera.”

Martha was dressed in a pink silk dress that made her skin look rosy and she’d had something nice done to her hair. Every now and then, when he saw her like that, he was reminded what a beautiful woman she used to be. Still was, sometimes.

“In a minute,” he said. He couldn’t go to the damned opera with Kate’s letter in his pocket. He unlocked his desk drawer and dropped it inside.

Her signature stared back at him.

Five years, and neither one of them had budged an inch. He’d started to give in and fly to New York the year before, when Martha went. On her little shopping spree, she’d said, as if he didn’t have sense enough to know that she was going up there to meet Kate. Every Thanksgiving they did the same thing, met in New York, while he stayed home and had pork and beans straight out of the can.

Not that he couldn’t afford to go out to a fancy restaurant and buy a good rib eye. He wanted to punish them both; so he ate all his meals alone with the cat. When Martha got back, he’d always have lost three pounds, and she’d feel sorry for him and spend the next six weeks trying to make up for being gone.

Sneaking behind his back.

He locked the desk and joined Martha in the hall. The opera was
Madame Butterfly
. Katie Elizabeth loved Puccini. She should be here with them instead of out there in that godforsaken land.

“Kate would have loved this,” Martha leaned over and whispered.

For a minute he started to ignore her, as he always did when she mentioned their daughter’s name. Then he thought of all those little Indian children dying, and no one being there to comfort his Katie Elizabeth.

“Yes, she would,” he said.

 o0o

“Kate?” Hollow-eyed, Kate looked up from the medical records she was studying. Deborah set a cup of coffee on her desk, then slid into the chair opposite her.

“I’m staying tonight, Kate.”

“No. I will. The Mingo children are desperately ill.”

“You haven’t slept in three days. If you don’t get some rest, you won’t be any good to any of them.”

Kate’s hands shook as she shoved aside the records and reached for the coffee.

“You’re right. I have to get some rest.” Her stomach clenched as the coffee hit it. She had to get some food as well. Fasting wasn’t going to save her patients.

Nothing could save them. Four new cases, three dead already, and the Mingo children hanging on by a thread.

“What’s happening here, Deborah? The symptoms say hepatitis, but my patients are dying. What am I missing?” She reached for her records, but Deborah put out a hand to stop her.

“Kate . . . leave it for tomorrow. Nurse’s orders.”

“Five years ago I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

“Neither did I. It feels good.” Deborah reached for Kate’s coat. “Wear this. There’s snow on the mountains, and the wind is cold enough to chill your blood.”

“Call me if anything happens, Deborah. Anything.”