Cherish (17 page)

Rebecca’s stomach lurched, and for a horrible instant, she feared she might vomit. “You should guard against an attack,” she managed to add, her throat crawling. “And you should get word to your men who are out there with the herd that they should do so as well.” She glanced down at the dog again, and tears burned at the backs of her eyes. “I should have told you about it this morning. I’m sorry I didn’t. This is—this is all my fault.”

While she stood there, feeling like a criminal who awaited sentencing, she kept her gaze fixed on the bullet wound in the hound’s shoulder, a means of reminding herself that she deserved whatever punishment befell her.

Finally she could bear the suspense no longer and she drew her gaze back to Spencer, expecting to see his expression seething with anger. Instead he was gazing at her with what appeared to be understanding and compassion, and perhaps even a trace of admiration as well.

“I already sent word to my foreman to be watchin’ his back out there,” he said, his mouth tugging up at one corner. “And I got three men ridin’ bobtail guard around our camp. They ain’t gonna catch us by surprise again, so you can rest easy, darlin’. You’re safe and so are we.”

He’d already known? Rebecca stared up at him, her gaze held captive by his. That was why he was looking
at her as he was—with understanding and compassion—because he’d somehow deduced before she opened her mouth that she was to blame for everything, that she’d held back information that might have enabled him to prevent it all from happening. And that expression in his eyes—the aching warmth—told her he also knew what it had cost her to blurt out the truth, not only to him, but in front of all his men.

Admiration
.

The tears that had been burning at the backs of her eyes welled into the foreground, and she gazed up at him through a swimming blur. Only minutes ago, she’d been castigating herself for becoming a pathetic, cowardly creature, and she’d been convinced that traits like pride and honor and integrity might be forever lost to her. Now the look in Race Spencer’s eyes gave each of those things back to her in some small measure, not because she could find them within herself, but because he evidently saw them in her.

He flicked a glance at Johnny. “Walk her back to camp.” Then, to her, he said, “I’ll be along soon. We’ll talk more then.”

No wrath. No punishment raining down upon her head. Just that wonderful warmth in his eyes. Rebecca bent her head and brushed at her cheeks. From the corner of her downcast eyes, she saw the younger man’s boots approaching from her right. Then his hand gently grasped her arm.

“Ma’am?”

She wanted to jerk away. Instead she swiped the last traces of wetness from her cheeks and said, “I’ve a bit of experience in treating animals.” She glanced back up at Race Spencer’s dark face. “May I lend assistance?”

Her heart caught when she saw the hound looking at her with woeful eyes.
Her doing
. The poor thing was obviously suffering horribly.

“Please, I’d really like to help.”

Spencer raised a dark eyebrow, his expression slightly bemused. “You know anything about bullet wounds?”

Rebecca stepped closer and bent to look. “No, but my
ma was the closest thing we had to a doctor at the church farm. She treated both people and animals, and I trained at her elbow. I’ve had experience with other types of wounds.”

He waved her forward. “If you want to take a look, I’d be glad of your opinion. I’m worried the shoulder’s shattered, and I’d rather put him down than have him be crippled.”

Rebecca knelt beside the canine to examine the wound. With a gentle touch, she palpitated the hound’s joint. “Judging by the angle of the bullet hole, Mr. Spencer, I believe the greatest danger would have been in the lead’s hitting his heart or nicking a lung. The first would have caused immediate death.” She glanced up. “Have you seen any bleeding from his nose or mouth?”

“No.”

She sat back on her heels and sighed. “Well, then. I can see no reason why he shouldn’t recover quite nicely if he receives proper treatment. I can’t make any guarantees, of course.” She lightly touched her fingertips to Blue’s bony head. “I shall certainly give it my best if you’ll allow me to try. This fellow proved himself to be a loyal friend to me this afternoon.”

As she spoke, Rebecca remembered how heartened she had felt that morning when she had first seen the hound. In some way she couldn’t define, the dog had become representative to her of all the simple things in life that had always brought her pleasure. It made no sense, but she couldn’t help but feel that by saving him, she would also be saving a part of herself.

In truth Race figured he’d had a hell of a lot more
experience in treating wounds than Rebecca did. Judging by the way she had blushed at seeing him without a shirt, he doubted she had attended the injuries of many men, at any rate, and it was his observation that, as a general rule, women sustained fewer serious injuries.

Nevertheless he stepped aside and let her take over. He wasn’t exactly sure why, only that he sensed she needed to feel she was helping. After carrying Blue back to camp and placing him on a pallet beside her wagon, Race stood ready to assist her in any way he could, boiling water, fetching whiskey and bandages, and then observing as she probed for the bullet in Blue’s shoulder, fully prepared to take over if she grew faint. Digging for a bullet was a nasty, stomach-turning job, and he doubted she had the constitution for it.

Rebecca surprised him, though. Despite her fragile, delicate appearance, there was a lot of steel in the girl’s spine. She turned pale a couple of times, but her hands remained steady, and she exhibited a skill with the knife that rivaled a qualified physician’s. He was also impressed by the way she handled Blue. Under the circumstances, the hound was amazingly cooperative for a dog, but even so, he was a far more difficult patient than any man Race had ever worked on. He had to hold the hound down while Rebecca removed the bullet, for it was a painful process, and even then, Blue jerked and yelped, making
what would have been a trying ordeal under the best of circumstances all the more exhausting.

The tension alone would have gotten to most people, making them impatient and short-tempered. Not so with Rebecca. When the hound grew frantic to escape Race’s grip, she simply stopped working for a bit, staunching the bleeding with a compress while she soothed the dog with comforting words and caresses. Each time, Blue quieted and surrendered to her ministrations again, almost as if he understood she was trying to help him. Race could see why. Rebecca had a way about her—a gentle goodness. While watching her, he felt that strange, achy warmth move through him again, not just once but several times, until he finally gave up on fighting it. He was drawn to this girl—drawn to her in a way he didn’t understand but was helpless to resist.

At one point when Blue’s cries became particularly heart-wrenching, Rebecca got tears in her eyes. Watching her, Race felt his own throat tighten. He’d never met anyone whose feelings were so transparent. From the first instant when he’d found her in the arroyo, he’d felt as if he were seeing clear to her soul when he looked into her eyes. Now he understood why. There was no ugliness inside her to block his view. That radiance about her—the angelic sweetness—was absolutely genuine.

“You love animals, don’t you?”

Lightly stroking the hound’s head and ruff to calm him, she smiled sadly. “I’m fond of them, yes.”

Race had a feeling that wasn’t saying it by half. In unguarded moments, he had noticed an almost desperate look on her small face. As much as he loved his dog, he began to worry that she might be even more devastated than he if Blue died. She kept whispering, “Oh, Blue, I’m so sorry,” her voice throbbing with regret.

At some point, Race began to suspect that Rebecca blamed herself for the dog’s injury. On the one hand, he could see how she might. But at the same time, he felt very strongly that she bore no responsibility for what had happened, and it bothered him to think that she was lashing herself with guilt. The girl had enough to deal with.

He had an uneasy feeling that her desperation to save the dog stemmed from something else as well, only he couldn’t put his finger on what, exactly. It was almost as if she believed that, by saving the dog, she might vanquish the nightmare that had overtaken her life.

Studying her expression, Race found himself spinning back through the years to the evening his mother had died. After pleading in vain for help from the men in the saloon, he had rushed back to the alley. En route, he had stopped to pick up the roses the two men had thrown on the boardwalk and crushed. He could remember as clearly as if it were yesterday how he had tried to make the flowers pretty again before taking them to his mother, as if by saving them he might also save her. The beautiful roses had been damaged beyond repair, of course, just as his mother had been. But he had frantically tried to fix them, anyway. His mother had smiled when he gave them to her, pressing the crushed blossoms to her cheek. She’d still been holding them when she died.

In retrospect, Race knew that his trying to salvage the roses had been a desperate, futile act—stemming from shock and crushing grief. It occurred to him now, as he watched Rebecca, that perhaps everyone found a rose, or its equivalent, and tried to save it when their life was being destroyed. Something beautiful and sweet that wasn’t yet lost. Maybe, to Rebecca, Blue was a beautiful rose, the one little touch of magic left to her in a world turned topsy-turvy.

“Rebecca, you ain’t entertainin’ the notion that it’s your fault Blue got shot, are you?” he asked shortly after she had removed the bullet.

At the question, her face lost color, and she caught her bottom lip between her teeth, biting down with such force that he winced. Though she said nothing, that alone answered his question. She blamed herself, all right. Not just for what had happened to the dog, but for everything else as well.

His heart twisted at the pain he saw reflected in her luminous blue eyes, and he found himself journeying backward through time yet again, recalling the guilt he
had felt over his mother’s death. He had complained of hunger, and in an attempt to feed him, she had died. Looking back on it, Race knew his feelings of guilt had been ridiculous. He’d been a little, seven-year-old boy, and he’d been starving. But after her death, he had remembered the times he’d cried in her arms, asking for something to eat, and he had blamed himself because she’d been standing on that street corner, trying to earn pennies enough to feed him.
His fault
. At least, he had believed that then.

Maybe everyone lashed themselves with guilt after losing someone they loved, he decided. If so, he could only wonder what sin Rebecca imagined that she had committed. From his standpoint, he couldn’t envision her doing anything that was very wrong. But, then, neither could a seven-year-old boy. Whatever the imagined sin, she’d evidently chosen trying to save Blue as a way to atone. And if the dog didn’t make it? What then? Would she blame herself for that as well?

Not wishing to distract her while she was working on the dog, Race let the subject drop, but he resolved to broach it again later, possibly that evening after things calmed down. Unless he missed his guess, they hadn’t seen the last of those plug-uglies, which meant there was bound to be more trouble. Every time something went wrong, he didn’t want Rebecca to berate herself or feel in any way to blame.

Every muscle in Rebecca’s body ached—her back, her shoulders, the tendons in her neck. After kneeling on the ground for so many hours with only a thin wool blanket as padding, even her kneecaps hurt. She wanted nothing more than to take a walk and stretch out the kinks. That would mean leaving camp by herself, though, and the mere thought terrified her. Those ruffians were out there somewhere, of that she had no doubt. All evening long, the realization had been at the back of her mind, a constant worry that could quickly turn to terror if she let herself dwell on it. Over the course of the evening, the
few times Race Spencer had ventured out of her sight, she’d felt frantic.

Usually a calm, self-sufficient person, she found her need to be near him disturbing. In her recollection, she had never been so fraught with anxiety or tension, and her sudden dependency on him struck her as being irrational. He was essentially a stranger, after all, and the small amount of time they’d spent together scarcely warranted the feelings for him that she was developing. Earlier while she’d been in the wagon bathing, she’d found herself listening for his voice out by the fire, and several times when she’d failed to hear it for a short while, she had grown panicky. It had been the most awful feeling—her heart slamming, her lungs grabbing frantically for breath, sweat filming her body. The complaints had vanished the second she heard him speak again.

Now, as the hour grew late, she was starting to dread the moment when she’d have to retire for the night. Just the thought of going to bed in that wagon all alone made her pulse quicken and her head start to ache. She had never been afraid of the dark or easily spooked. As an only child, she’d slept alone for as long as she could remember. What on earth was wrong with her, that she should suddenly have night terrors? Race Spencer had men riding guard around the camp. Some of his wranglers would undoubtedly be asleep in their bedrolls only a few feet from her wagon for most of the night. She had absolutely nothing to be afraid of. But no matter how many times she told herself that, the disquiet within her didn’t abate.

Rebecca lightly rested her hand on Blue’s head. In the faint glow of the firelight, his mottled brown ears looked as though they were fashioned from velvet and were nearly as soft. She ran the tip of her thumb along the indentation between his closed eyes and listened to the rhythmic huff of his breathing.
Fast asleep
. Touching a fingertip to the underside of a loose jowl, she checked for fever. Though warmer than a human’s, his body temperature felt to her as if it were within normal range for a dog, which was a good sign. As long as she didn’t lose
him to infection—which she’d done everything she could to guard against—he would live to chase more rabbits, an ability that Race Spencer had stressed as being of utmost importance. The man clearly loved his dog.

She smiled slightly, recalling how Race had hovered over her all evening while she worked on Blue. He had assisted her in every way possible, trying to anticipate her needs. Each time her coffee had grown cold, he had refilled the battered tin cup he’d washed out especially for her, despite Mr. Grigsley’s grumbling about his wasting water. Then he had brought her a supper plate of beans and cornbread and spelled her so she might eat.

In all honesty, Rebecca felt he was treating her far more nicely than she deserved. Because of her, his very livelihood was in jeopardy, and she wouldn’t have blamed him a bit for feeling resentful or bitterly angry. In fact, she found it rather incredible that he wasn’t. All evening long, he’d been receiving nothing but bad news, the tally of lost cattle climbing sharply with each report. How much more could he take without wanting to take the losses out of her hide?

Gazing out into the endless darkness that lay beyond camp, Rebecca allowed herself to wonder what she would do without Race Spencer’s protection. She’d lived her whole life on the farm in Pennsylvania, her excursions into town rare and in the company of church members or relatives who had always looked after her. She’d never driven a team of horses; one of the brethren had always done that. She’d never had to find her way anyplace; that, too, had always fallen to one of the brethren. She’d simply followed along, like a duckling in a queue, never paying much attention to how she got where she was going. And if she’d had to find her way? In Pennsylvania there were well-traveled roads to follow, with signs to indicate which turns to take.

Now here she was in the middle of nowhere without a road or a sign anywhere. No neighboring farms. No general store. No friends. No family. She’d never felt so horribly alone or so helpless. Out here, one couldn’t collect a hen from the chicken yard for supper. No cow with full
udders was out in the barn. There was no smokehouse a few paces away. No dried vegetables. No garden. No cool cellar where potatoes were stored in abundance. Just mile after mile of nothing. If left to her own devices in this place, she would die out here. It was as simple as that.

Race Spencer was her salvation. If he abandoned her, she would be helpless.

A rustling sound came from her right. For at least the hundredth time since darkness had fallen, she turned to peer through the shadows, her heart slamming. A black shape moved. It wasn’t her imagination this time. There was actually someone coming around the rear corner of the wagon.

Clamping an arm over her bruised ribs, she tensed to spring to her feet. But then the shape moved into the flickering light cast by the dying fire and took on the outline of a man, a tall man who moved with fluid strength. She went limp with relief.
Race
.

He’d evidently left camp to gather wood for the fire, though where he might have found it, she hadn’t a clue. More amazing, he had a full armload. He must have walked some distance, for she’d seen no firewood or anything close to it in this desolate area.

The pain behind her eyes seemed to explode, knifing to the back of her skull. He’d left camp? She threw a glance at the shadows, so black and impenetrable, that closed in on her from nearly every direction, some of them seeming to move with each flicker of light. She had poor eyesight at night. If there were a man crouched in one of those puddles of darkness, she’d never see him. And Race Spencer had left her alone?

Panic welled.
Calm down, Rebecca. He’s back now. Nothing happened. You’re overreacting
! But it was easier said than done. Mr. Grigsley was sleeping in the bedroll wagon only a few feet away, she reminded herself. It wasn’t as if he’d left her entirely alone. He also had men riding guard. With them circling camp, it was highly unlikely that any of those ruffians would be able to slip past them.

Hugging her ribs, she dragged in a deep breath and
forced herself to slowly exhale.
Calm
. She had to stop this. Nothing had happened during his absence, after all. Only now she was afraid to take her eyes off of him.

An almost overpowering urge came over her to join him at the fire. She stared at his trouser belt, imagining her hand curled over the leather. He couldn’t very well leave her if she attached herself to him.

She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe again. In and out. Lands, her thoughts were making no sense, even to her. Quailing with trepidation one moment because she feared he might become angry with her, then wanting to hold on to the poor man and never let go of him.