Desert Angel (37 page)

She tried not to think of how difficult it had been to stick the needle into his flesh, nor how easily the steel shank had sunk into the damaged skin. She knew that for the rest of her life she would be haunted by the tugging and pulling sensation of the needle weaving in and out of him.

“You did good.” Breed’s compliment was all the more effective because of its simplicity.

“Now what?” she asked, as reaction began to set in and her hands started to shake.

“Now we wait.”

“Wait . . . “ March knew that the waiting would be the hardest part.

“When the fever comes we may have to tie him down again if he starts to thrash around. We should know one way or the other in three or four days.”

“Three or four days … my God, I don’t know if I can wait that long to know if he’ll live.”

“The wait will be far shorter if he dies.”

“He won’t die!” Looking around the room, March finally saw the soiled linens and buckets of bloody water. “I think I’ll get this mess cleaned up, check on Jamie, and then sit down and have a good cry.”

With Breed’s help, the room was set to rights in a very short time. He left to find the baby for her, giving her much-needed time to be alone with Jim.

He was so pale beneath his tan. His eyes were closed, but she wondered if it was in sleep. He had opened his eyes only once during the time they had dug for the slug. His gaze had connected briefly with hers, before pain had driven him back to the realm of unconsciousness.

March gently stroked the hair back from his eyes. “Fight, Jim Travis,” she whispered. “Your son needs you … I need you.”

Her words surprised her. They had been unplanned, coming almost of their own. Not until she had uttered them had she known the extent of her need for him. They hadn’t discussed love since the night of their wedding, but standing there watching him struggle for each breath, March began to wonder. Could this be love? Was love this overpowering need to protect him from further harm? Was the fear growing in her, because the man she loved was injured?

“I wish I knew what love is,” she whispered more to herself than to the sleeping man. “I’m so confused. Am I so scared because I love you? Or is it a selfish desire to have you live so that my life doesn’t go back to what it was before?

“How do I know love from self-preservation? Do I love you, Jim Travis? Or do I simply want to keep the many wonderful things you’ve given me?”

Kneeling beside the bed, March rested her head against the soft surface as exhaustion bowed her shoulders.

“I’m so confused,” she whispered. “And so very, very scared.”

March stilled, barely breathing, when she felt his hand come to rest on her hair. Only the stillness in the room let her hear his murmured word. Whether conscious thought or a mind so riddled with pain that it reached out to another time, it brought her a measure of comfort she so desperately needed.

“Angel …”

On the morning of the third day, with dark circles beneath her eyes and only bits of sleep snatched during the endless nights, March knew Jim needed more help than either she or Breed could provide.

Leaving him at the tender mercy of Hank, she went in search of the foreman. She was unaware of the crystal-clear morning air with just a hint of winter chill, or the softening of the desert as it awaited for respite from the summer heat.

Carrying Jamie balanced on her hip required almost more strength than she had left. By the time she reached the barn, she knew that the baby had gained at least twenty pounds in the last two days.

Breed was speaking in his quiet manner to one of the hands. She waited patiently for him to finish and send the man on his way. To her knowledge, the men were aware that Jim had been injured, but the details had deliberately been left sketchy.

“He needs the doctor. Go get him,” she stated bluntly, too tired and too worried to take the time for diplomacy.

Breed saw the exhaustion pulling at her, and knew that only her determination and willpower were keeping her on her feet. During the past two days, he had spent many hours with her and deeply respected her loyalty to her husband. If anything, she was stubborn to a fault, insisting on being with Jim every minute of the day and night.

He almost smiled when he remembered checking on her late last night and finding her sitting on the floor beside the bed, sound asleep. He had picked her up and put her on the bed beside Jim, and now he wondered what she had thought this morning when she had awakened to find herself there.

“I said he needs a doctor,” she repeated when Breed hadn’t responded.

“It may be dangerous for him, if word gets out,” he warned quietly.

“It will be
deadly
for him, if we don’t do something. His fever is out of control.”

“That is usual in such an injury.”

“I don’t want to hear usual!” she shouted. “He’s dying. Do you understand me? While we stand here arguing, he’s upstairs dying! Post a guard around the house, stand a man outside the bedroom door, find some killers for hire. I don’t give a damn what you do, but I want that doctor here, and I want him here
now!

“My husband’s life is threatened and I expect you to do as you’re told. Do I make myself clear? Get the doctor!”

Breed smiled. He knew it was the wrong thing to do, that it would just further ignite her rage, but he couldn’t help it. She was a mother mountain lion fighting for her cubs, and, as are all mothers, she was magnificent.

When the grin slashed across his handsome face, March saw red. She had heard the expression used, but had thought it sounded kind of silly. Now she understood it … Lord, how she understood it!

Seeing his smile and misinterpreting it for derision, she wanted to attack him. She even went so far as to look around the barn for a safe place to put Jamie so that he wouldn’t be in danger. Never, ever, had she been so violently angry or so powerless to retaliate.

“Sheathe your claws, little cat,” Breed said quietly. “My humor is not at your expense. Since I left my people, I’ve never seen a woman so determined to protect her mate. Most white women I’ve seen are weak and helpless. They demand to be treated as fragile flowers.

“You are like the women of my tribe. You will bring about your own death to protect those you love. It has made my heart lighter to know that my friend has such a wife.”

“Go for the doctor … please?” Tears clouded her eyes, belying the strength she had shown earlier. His words had been so gentle and sincere, that she felt like the biggest fraud in the world. She wasn’t strong … she just wanted, needed Jim to live, to be well, to return her world to the safe, dependable thing it had been before he’d been hurt.

“I will go. We will take the risk, if only because you need the reassurance the man of medicine can give you.”

“You’ll go now?”

“As soon as I saddle my horse.” Breed reached up and stroked Jamie’s soft cheek. “Take the little warrior into the house to be near his father. He will feel your presence, and know that he is surrounded by your strength and your love.”

“I’m not strong,” she sighed wearily. “I wish I were, but I’m not … I’ve tried so hard …”

“You are one of the strongest women I’ve ever known, either Indian or white. You are like the plants of the desert, you will struggle against any hardship, and then will blossom to show that you have won.”

He reached for his saddle and carried it past her toward the corral. A shrill whistle pierced the air, and a magnificent Appaloosa stallion responded by raising his head. Another whistle, and the animal raced toward the man who beckoned.

In a matter of minutes the horse was saddled and restlessly pawing the ground in anticipation. When Breed mounted, it was difficult for March to decide which was the more impressive animal;

both were flawless examples of perfection, neither of them quite tamed.

“Go do your job, Angel of the Desert,” he commanded, giving her a name that seemed appropriate for this tough but gentle woman. He found himself almost regretting that she was the wife of another. He had never considered taking a wife before now … now that it was too late.

“My job is to worry,” she replied, a slight smile creasing her lips when she remembered their conversation so many months earlier.

“No, your job is to be a woman. You do it well.”

TWENTY-THREE

March stood at the kitchen window, a cup of coffee slowly cooling in her hands. As she stared out at the mountains on the horizon, she let her thoughts drift in a hazy web of exhaustion. It had been five days since Jim had been shot. Five days of hell, relieved only by occasional moments of intense relief when his fever would break and he would be lucid for a few hours.

At first she had been fooled into thinking that the worst was over, that he would survive. Now she knew better, for all too soon the fever returned. It would climb until he felt on fire, until his skin was too hot to touch.

The doctor had come, complimented March on the fine row of stitches, and commented on Breed’s excellent care. Stating that there was nothing more that could be done other than to keep Jim as comfortable as possible while he fought the raging fever, he had gone.

March’s own rage had known no bounds, as she had ranted against the seemingly indifferent doctor. It wasn’t until she had seen Breed’s smile that she had finally stopped raving. It was downright aggravating the way that man seemed to enjoy her anger!

She finally agreed with him that there was nothing the doctor could do that they couldn’t. She knew that the doctor had other patients he needed to tend to, making it necessary for him to leave. But that didn’t matter. Those people were strangers to her; Jim was her husband. The doctor could have, should have stayed just in case … just in case.

March shivered at the thought of what “just in case” meant. They had fought so long and hard to save him, surely they would be rewarded. He had to live … he had to! She couldn’t let him go. She hadn’t told him about the baby they had made together, or that Jamie could crawl across a room now … or that she loved him.

Sometime, during one of the endless nights, while the world slept and she kept a lonely vigil, March had accepted that she was in love with her husband.

The realization had come quietly, settling comfortably around her like a soft mantle. She had watched his fever-ridden body toss and turn, listened to his constant mumbling, and knew that her life would never be the same if she had to live it without him. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she didn’t want to live it without him.

Leaning against the window frame, the coffee cup forgotten in her hands, March felt a restless yearning to find solace in Jim’s arms, to turn back the clock to a time before he had been shot, so that she could tell him of her love.

She knew that he didn’t love her, might never love her. She thought she could accept that, even understood why he might never be able to love again.

During some of his fever-induced ramblings, she had learned how his love for Melanie had slowly eroded to pity and dislike. Tears had filled her eyes, while she listened to him beg Melanie to forgive him, and she longed to offer comfort, to give him the kind of love he deserved, to wipe away his feelings of guilt because of her death.

But all she could do now, all she had done for days, was wait, wait for either the fever to break a final time, or for death to release him from his pain.

It was there again, that soft misty cloud with its pristine facade of newly fallen snow and its promise of tranquility. He didn’t know his own name, or why he was being punished in such a tortuous way. He wasn’t sure if he still lived. Maybe he had died, and this was hell with its unrelenting fires of eternal damnation.

He did know, almost instinctively, that if he just reached out, he would be enveloped in a mantle of coolness, the savage heat would be tamed. That it was a false promise was of little concern to him; after days of being burned alive, he cherished even the thought of reprieve.

He was tempted. It was an offer so filled with temptation, that he began to wonder why he hesitated. The desire, the need, the demand of his own body, commanded that he accept.

But each time he nearly gave in to the enticement, a voice called softly to him, staying his hand. A sweet voice, so filled with love and longing, begged him not to go.

He found that he could resist the lure of the cloud, but not that of the voice. Somewhere in his fever-induced delirium, he fought to identify the voice, to put a name to the person calling to him. It became a challenge to search through his jumbled memories to discover her name.

Finally the cloud drifted away, changing shapes as clouds are wont to do. First a beckoning hand, then a velvet field thick with soft spring grass, and finally a concealing curtain, each inviting him to come and explore. He was tempted … but then the voice …

Always the voice, calling sweetly through the pain, promising a world of paradise in words he couldn’t quite understand.

A soft tapping on the back door released March from her thoughts. Expecting to find one of the ranch hands inquiring about Jim, she was startled speechless to see her father, hat in hand, a lopsided grin on his face.