Deep as the Rivers (Santa Fe Trilogy) (30 page)

   
“This won’t cure him—it’ll give him warts!” she had shrieked.

   
Micajah had laughed. “Nope. They’s somethin’ in ‘em thet kills th’ pizen. Don’t rightly know whut, but my ma’s folks brung hit along from the old country hunerts of years ago.”

   
She had watched doubtfully as he packed the goo around the wound, but the next morning her fears turned to amazement when the fiery red swelling was nearly gone. Now the stitches were drawing tightly together, almost knit and ready to be removed. If only he would regain consciousness.

   
Squeezing her eyes closed, she shook her head, trying to dislodge the searing visions from his feverish ravings. He had called out for his sister and his father, but then came the awful revelations...

   
"
Maman...Maman
." His voice had been so hoarse and soft she could barely make it out at first. As she had leaned closer attempting to soothe him with cool washcloths pressed to his feverish skin, he rambled on. "Why did you go away,
Maman
? You broke Papa’s heart. How could you take Liza and leave me behind?"

   
Her heart wrenched at the little boy wistfulness in his voice as he talked about his first Christmas as a thirteen-year-old alone with a taciturn bereaved father in a big empty house. But if that betrayal cut to the quick, it paled by comparison to the next shocking revelation.

   
“I know you’re disappointed in me, Tish, but I’m a soldier...not presidential material. Hell, I won’t even make general. You married the wrong man...tried to make you understand…”

   
The words about his mother had touched her deeply but this, this was his wife, far too personal and painful for her to hear. She arose to leave the cabin and call Micajah to take over but before she could reach the door, he thrashed restlessly, kicking off the covers and his voice rose. She rushed back to his side.

   
“You bitch! You bloody bitch. You killed my child! May Wretz is an abortionist...can’t lie to me. I know you went to her while I was away. Did you kill the first child, too...that tragic miscarriage you suffered when we were first married...you swore you couldn’t bear to carry another babe and lose it...kept your word, Tish...you kept...your...word...”

   
His voice had faded as he dropped off into deeper unconsciousness. Trembling, Olivia had finished sponging him, then carefully replaced the covers and kept her bedside vigil until Micajah returned.

   
Now she understood the reason Samuel Shelby was such an embittered misogynist. He had hated his dead wife bitterly, and he mistrusted all women except his sister.

   
He will never love you.

   
Olivia trembled when the thought suddenly flashed into her mind.
Fool
, she berated herself, then added,
As if
I
loved him!

   
Looking down, she took a deep breath and finished packing the herbs against the healing sutures before picking up the clean strips of linen to rebandage the wound. She leaned across his chest and reached over to begin wrapping the bandage when suddenly she sensed his eyes on her. At very close range, Olivia looked into Samuel’s harsh blue gaze.

   
He was speechless, as much from amazement as from the parched rawness of his throat. “I’ll be damned,” he finally rasped, “I wasn’t hallucinating about the Osage princess.”

   
His eyes swept over her as she sat bolt-upright on the edge of the big bed where he lay. She no longer wore the exotic beaded buckskin dress, but she scarcely looked like any conventional white female either. Her hair was bound in a single fat braid that lay across one shoulder, tied with a rawhide thong decorated with an eagle feather. She wore an age softened buckskin shirt, open at the throat, revealing an enticing patch of sun-gilded skin. Her nose was dusted with small gold freckles and that glorious red hair was streaked with bits of deep amber as if she had spent long hours in the hot sun.

   
Olivia watched him survey her, certain that he found her most unfeminine and repugnant in the comfortable and practical britches and shirt she had cut down from a set of Micajah’ s far larger garments. “I’m hardly a princess, but my father was the son of a baron,” she replied with all the self-possession she could muster.
I don’t care a fig what he thinks of me.

   
He felt a fiery stab of pain when he started to move, then reached over to clutch his left side, but she quickly grabbed his hand.

   
“Don’t. You might tear open the wound. I was just changing the dressing.” She lifted the bandage by way of explanation as he lay his right arm back on the mattress.

   
“Where am I?” he asked, looking around the interior of a small cabin, obviously not an Osage lodge.

   
The walls were made of whole logs, laid horizontally with tight mud and straw chinking between them, sealing out the weather. The floor was packed earth, hardened and polished to a dark maroon shine by “curing” it with buffalo blood, a trick he’d seen in numerous Indian villages along the Santa Fe trail. The only furniture consisted of a sturdy puncheon log table and four chairs, along with two plank shelves stretching across one wall, stocked with supplies and cooking implements.

   
A big limestone fireplace filled one wall. A low bank of coals glowed in it and a heavy iron kettle hung over them, giving off a spicy fragrance that made his stomach growl. Several rifles and an old musket hung on the opposite wall, along with an Osage war lance, a tomahawk and several gleaming knives, all decorated with shells and feathers. Two rather large windows let in golden sunlight and amazingly he could see the bright blooms of fall flowers peeping over the window sill.

   
“You’re in our cabin,” she replied matter-of-factly, as she resumed bandaging his chest.
Let him ask.

   
“
Our
cabin?” He felt poleaxed. What was this helpless European aristocrat doing garbed in buckskins, living in a settler’s cabin in the wilderness...somewhere?

   
“Actually Micajah built it. Micajah Johnstone,” she replied as if that explained everything.

   
“And who the hell is Micajah Johnstone?” he asked with rising irritation.
Your new lover?

   
“Raise up carefully so I can slide the wrapping under you,” she instructed, reaching across his broad chest, trying unsuccessfully to remain unaffected by his male scent and body heat. “Micajah is a mountain man or woodsman...sort of.”

   
“Sort of?”

   
“What I mean is, Micajah has spent years here living at peace with the various Indian tribes and white trappers, but he doesn’t trap for a living.”

   
“Has he a rich family back east who sends him money?” Samuel asked cynically. Already he was beginning to dislike this Johnstone fellow.

   
“Don’t be absurd. We grow our own corn and vegetables, hunt for meat and hides. We even have a bee tree,” she added with pride. “Nature provides.”

   
“We?”

   
“Is there an echo in here? Strange, I never noticed it before,” she added serenely, proud of her steady hand on the wrapping. “I live here, too. He saved my life after you abandoned me on the Missouri.”

   
“I did not abandon you. I left you in Manuel Lisa’s care.”

   
“Well, I didn’t choose to remain in his care,” she snapped back. “I left on my own.”

   
“I can imagine you didn’t get very far,” he said dryly, grateful she had not been killed or taken captive by hostiles.

   
“Oh, I managed for three days,” she exaggerated, “until I ran afoul of a she-bear with cubs.” Olivia was rewarded when a look of horror flashed across his face. She was strangely pleased. “That’s when Micajah saved my life. I’ve lived here ever since—except for when we’re off on a hunt or trading in the Osage villages. It’s lucky for you we were in Pawhuska’s town when you straggled in. If Micajah and I hadn’t brought you here, they’d probably have killed you,” she said blithely, leaning back to inspect her bandaging.

   
“You live with this Johnstone. How cozy.” He sounded like a churlish prude even to his own ears—or worse yet, he sounded just plain jealous.

   
Olivia stiffened. “Yes, it is—or it was until you horned in. We should’ve left you to the mercies of the English agent and his young Osage warriors.”

   
His fever fogged brain suddenly became crystal clear. “What do you know about this Englishman?”

   
She shrugged. “Only what Micajah was told by old White Hair. He’s been stirring up the young firebrands among the Osage who are tired of the Americans breaking their treaty promises.”

   
“He was coming to Pawhuska’s town?” he asked, trying to sit up.

   
“He’s probably there now, but you’re hardly in any shape to go chasing after him,” she said, noting with satisfaction that he had the good sense to give in to the pain and lean back against the pillows. She felt a sudden need to place some distance between them. She stood up and walked over to the hearth where her stew pot bubbled, then ladled a small amount of broth into a bowl.

   
Samuel cursed silently at his failure to complete his mission. “If the Englishman wins over the Osage, the Missouri will run red with blood.”

   
“And you could change all that?” She looked at him skeptically, holding the bowl in front of her.

   
“If I had caught up with the bastard, yes, I might have,” he replied stubbornly. “How long have I been here?”

   
“Several weeks, give or take a few days. We don’t have much need to look at calendars around here,” she said dryly, approaching the side of the bed with a bowl and spoon in hand. “Now, open wide. You need some nourishment.”

   
“What I need is to get the hell up and back to Pawhuska’s village.”

   
“Try not to make yourself an even bigger ass than nature already has made you,” she said sweetly. “You’re starved, slashed, fevered—and you’ve been soundly coshed in the head. Not to mention that your feet look like cabbage slaw. You couldn’t even stand on them, much less walk. Open wide.” She held a spoonful of broth up to his mouth.

   
He considered protesting her high-handed assumption that he would be a docile patient but just then his stomach, so long without food, gave a low insistent rumble. He capitulated and opened his mouth. “That’s delicious. Did you make it?” The question was meant to be sarcastic.

   
And so Olivia took it. “Remembering my coffee?” She tried to keep the tartness from her voice. “Micajah has taught me how to cook what I shoot, as well as how to dress the skins and preserve the meat.”

   
“I can’t help but wonder what else Micajah’s taught you,” he muttered beneath his breath.

   
Olivia heard him and angrily jerked the spoon away from his mouth, spilling the scalding broth across his chest. “I should’ve left you lying by the riverbank and let that Englishman carve you up!” She slammed the spoon down into the broth, splattering his bare chest with even more hot liquid. “Here, feed yourself.” She shoved the bowl into his hand when he raised it to wipe off the burning broth.

   
“Ouch! Dammit, that hurts,” he yelled, his voice cracking. When he tried to hold the bowl up, he found to his horror that his hands were so weak he almost dropped the whole scalding hot mess all over himself. Resting the bowl on his chest, he called out to her, “I’m sorry. Please, come take this before I add burns to all my other injuries.”

   
At once Olivia felt contrite. He had nearly died of his wounds. The fever had broken only that morning and here she was expecting him to be able to sit up and eat by himself.

   
But he made her so infuriatingly angry that she could kill him every time they passed more than half an hour together. “Here, I’ll feed you,” she said ungraciously, taking the bowl from him and sitting down on the edge of the bed once more.

   
God, how haggard and pale he looked. “What happened to you—how did you end up half-dead and naked, wandering afoot through the woods?”

   
“I was careless,” he said disgustedly. “Some of that damned Englishman’s allies—those young Osage hotheads you mentioned—captured me.”

   
“And you escaped?” she prompted, continuing to spoon the broth down him.

   
“Sort of.”

   
“Sort of?” she mimicked.

   
“They stripped my boots and shirt, then had me run a gauntlet between a dozen armed warriors.”

   
“A dozen! I can’t believe you made it.”

   
“Neither can I,” he replied grimly. “That’s how I got the slash in my side to add to the lovely little tap with a war club that brought me down in the first place. But I did manage to get past them. They graciously gave me a couple of hundred yards lead before giving chase. I’ve never run so hard or so long in my life.”