Journey of the Heart (39 page)

“Thank Christ. He saved our lives, Gabe.”

“He’s bleeding pretty bad, though. It looks like it could have hit his lung.”

“Let’s get him up on Snowflake.”

It was hard work, given Juan’s dead weight and Gabe’s bad arm, but they finally got him in the saddle and Michael mounted the mare and settled himself down behind Chavez.

“You lead his black, Gabe. And let’s get out of here. The rest of Mackie’s men may only be hired hands, but I’m not waitin’ to find out!”

Once they were out of the gate and well on their way down the road, Michael pulled the mare to a halt. “Can ye spare yer shirt, Gabe? I can feel the blood pourin’ out of him.”

Gabe lifted the shirt off and together they managed to create a clumsy, makeshift binding that seemed to stop the bleeding a little. Chavez moaned a few times and Michael called his name. “He’s out, poor bugger, but that’s just as well.”

They slowed the horses as they got closer to the ranch. It seemed as if they had been gone for hours, but as they reached the house, Michael realized it was not yet noon. Elizabeth and Cait were at the door and running to meet them.

“My God, Michael, your face! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Elizabeth. Help me with Chavez, will ye, Gabe?” Gabe, who had his arm around Cait, let her go reluctantly and they eased Chavez down.

“We must get him into the parlor,
a ghra
.”

Elizabeth shuddered.

“I know he frightens you, Elizabeth, but he saved my life. Twice.”

“I’ll get Jake, Da,” said Cait, running toward the barn for the older man. When Jake got there, they were able to carry Chavez in.

Sadie had been standing on the porch, buffeted by conflicting emotions. Her beloved brother was safe, thank the Lord. But the man she loved was being carried into the house, his face white and the makeshift bandage soaked in blood. She stood there alone as they went past, listening to Elizabeth give directions, wondering if she would ever be able to move from that spot. Then she felt an arm around her shoulders. It was Gabe. “Sarah Ellen, are you all right?”

She nodded.

“I am sorry, Sadie, I was wrong about Chavez. Michael Burke would be dead twice over if it hadn’t been for him. And I don’t think he did it for love of us, Sadie. You judged rightly; he had some feelings for you.”

Sadie shuddered and turning into her brother’s chest, started to cry in great racking sobs. Gabe just held her and let her cry.

“Oh, Gabe, I was so scared to see you go and with bad feelings between us. What if you hadn’t come back? Or came back like Juan? I couldn’t have borne it.” After a moment, she pulled out of his arms and looked up into her brother’s face. “How is he, Gabe?”

“It’s a chest wound, Sadie. We can’t tell if it hit a lung or not. He’s lost a lot of blood. I’m riding for the doctor now.”

“I must go into him,” said Sadie. “Come back quick, Gabe.”

The moment Elizabeth heard that Chavez was responsible for saving Michael’s life, she became calm and efficient, spreading a clean sheet on the sofa, getting a basin of hot water from the kitchen, and scissors to cut off Chavez’s shirt.

The bullet had gone in low on the right side of his chest. She rolled him over gently to look at his back, but there was no exit wound as she had hoped. “The bullet’s still in there, Michael,” she said, as she carefully lowered Chavez down again. “The doctor will have to dig for it and he’s lost so much blood already…. Cait, get a sheet from the linen chest and cut it into strips. At least we can try to stop the bleeding.” She took a clean cloth and wet it and cleaned his face. “At least there’s no blood from his mouth, Michael, so maybe it just missed his lung. Here, Sadie, you come over and hold this towel to his lips,” said Elizabeth, dipping the material into water. “We need to get some liquid back into him.”

* * * *

Luckily the doctor had been in and was back with Gabe in a little over an hour.

“Looks like you’re running a hospital here, Mrs. Burke,” he joked as he took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves. “You would have made a good nurse,” he said approvingly as he loosened the bandages Elizabeth had made. “Has he been conscious at all?”

“No.”

“Well, the bullet is still there and must come out. He’s too weak for chloroform, so I’ll need someone to be ready to hold him down while I probe for it, just in case he comes to. Mrs. Burke? Miss Hart?”

Both women nodded.

Sadie thought she might faint several times as the doctor probed for the bullet. “Shattered a rib,” he muttered. “But missed the lung by a hairbreadth. Lucky man. Hmm….”

“What is it, Doctor?” asked Sadie.

“The bullet is lodged in a back muscle next to the spine. This will be tricky.”

Juan had been still for most of the doctor’s work, but as he went in deeper through the muscle, he groaned and opened his eyes and gasped in pain.

“Hold him down, Mrs. Burke, Miss Hart, I don’t want to slip up at this point.”

Sadie and Elizabeth gently held Juan’s arms and Elizabeth, to her astonishment, found herself crooning to him: “It is all right, Señor Chavez. It will be over soon. It is all right.”

“Got it,” crowed the doctor, dropping the bullet in a dish. “Now all we can do is wait, Mrs. Burke,” he said as he sprinkled sulphur powder into the wound and packed it with clean gauze and wrapped it with his own bandage. “He’s pretty young and healthy. Unless an infection sets in, he’ll be all right. He’ll likely run a fever, though, so I’ll leave you some quinine.”

“Thank you so much, Dr. Fraser,” said Elizabeth as she walked him to the door.

“I hadn’t thought you were that fond of Señor Chavez, ma’am,” he remarked with a smile.

“He saved Michael’s life, Doctor. That is enough to make me care for him,” she replied.

Michael was holding the doctor’s horse. “I’ve walked and watered him, so he should be recovered enough from your ride to get you home, Fraser.”

“Thank you, Burke. Will I be needed any place else today, do you think?” he asked ironically.

“Nelson Mackie will not be needing you or anything else, Doctor, but there may be one or two of his men who could use your services.”

“So Mackie is no longer a threat to you, eh, Burke?”

“Or to the valley. And it was a fair fight on our part, if that is what ye’re asking.”

“I know you well enough to know that. As a doctor, I’m never glad when death takes someone, but I must confess I have no regrets where Mackie is concerned.”

“Nor I,” agreed Michael. “Nor I.”

Chavez lay very quiet that afternoon and evening and as Sadie sat by him, she wondered if he would ever open his eyes again. Perhaps he would just slip away, never having regained consciousness. Never knowing that she loved him. No matter that he didn’t love her. He had cared enough about her to spare her brother and save both Gabe and Mr. Burke. Whatever he had been in the past, he had more than made up for it today as far as she was concerned.

Cait and Elizabeth insisted that she get some sleep and sent her off to bed. “I’ll take the first shift, Ma,” said Cait. “You must be exhausted.”

“I’ll go up for a little nap, Cait, but call me if anything changes.”

“I will.”

Cait hadn’t wanted to wake her mother, but two hours into her shift, Chavez began tossing and turning and muttering in Spanish and English. When she put her hand on his forehead, she realized he was burning with fever. She crept up the stairs and shook Elizabeth by the shoulder. “Ma,” she whispered.

“Umm, what is it, Michael?” Elizabeth groaned.

“It’s not Da, it’s Cait, Ma. Señor Chavez has a bad fever.”

Elizabeth was awake and up in an instant. “Don’t wake your Da, Cait. You just go to bed and I’ll take over,” Elizabeth whispered back, pulling her wrapper around her.

“Are you sure, Ma?”

“Go to bed, dearest,” said her mother. “You’ve done your share.”

Elizabeth made her way to the kitchen and poured herself a cup of leftover coffee. It was lukewarm and bitter, but at least it would keep her awake. She poured a little of the powder the doctor had left into a mug and adding water to it, stirring it till it dissolved.

Cait was right; Chavez was burning up, Elizabeth thought. She sponged his face with cool water and dipping a clean cloth in the mug of water, held it to his lips. He sucked at it greedily and she managed to get most of it into him. “Now it is just a matter of waiting,” she whispered.

His hand was pulling convulsively at the sheet so she placed one hand on top of it and with the other, stroked his head as though he were a child, saying, “There, there, you will be all right.”

When his eyes opened, she drew back in surprise, but then it became clear that he wasn’t really seeing her, for he was muttering deliriously. At first, it was in Spanish and he sounded like a frightened child as he said,
“Si, señor
, I will do it. No, no, I don’t want to be beaten again.”

What kind of childhood had he had? she wondered. He wasn’t talking to his mother and father, but only this
señor
whoever he was. Then he suddenly called out in English, “Don’t hurt my ma,” and Elizabeth winced as he clutched her hand. His voice lowered and as if he was a little boy convincing himself to be brave, he recited a litany to himself: “My ma is dead. My pa. They killed Lizzie too. I must be brave. I can’t cry….”

Elizabeth’s hand faltered as she stroked his hot forehead. Why did he speak of his father and mother in English? How had they died? And who was Lizzie?

She looked into his unseeing eyes. They were green eyes, flecked with brown. The hair she was brushing back with her hand was a light brown. His shoulders were sprinkled with freckles. Like hers. Like her father’s had been.

“Who is Lizzie, Juan?” she whispered, but he only continued reciting his dreadful litany.

It
couldn’t
be Jonathan. It
couldn’t
be, not after all these years. Lizzie was probably a maid. His mother and father were…dead. Killed by Comancheros. He had been hauled onto a horse’s back and sold to some Mexican family?

It made sense. Oh, my dear God, it all made sense. How her memories started to come back after she’d seen him. Why he spoke both perfect Spanish and English. Why he was who he was:
El Lobo
.

“Jonathan,” she whispered, cupping his cheek in her hand. “Is it really you, Jonathan?”

His hand tightened on hers and the look in his eyes was that of a tortured child. “Ma? Oh, Ma. I want my Ma….”

“Ma’s dead, Jonathan,” Elizabeth whispered. “But this is Lizzie, and I’m here to take care of you now.”

* * * *

“Mr. Burke?”

Michael stirred and reached his hand out for Elizabeth.

“It’s Sadie, Mr. Burke, I’m sorry to disturb you, but I went down to relieve Mrs. Burke, but she won’t leave him. She looks awful, Mr. Burke,” continued Sadie, sounding shaken.

“Thank you, Sadie,” said Michael, raising himself and pushing the hair out of his eyes. “I’ll go right down.” Jesus, he shouldn’t have left Elizabeth alone with him. Not when Chavez disturbed her so. Michael ran downstairs barefoot and in his underwear and stopped at the entrance to the parlor.

His wife was sitting there, stroking Chavez’s cheek, whispering to him, calling him Jonathan. Mary, Queen of Heaven, it had been too much for her and she must be off somewhere in the past. Jonathan had been her little brother’s name. The one who’d been killed by the Comancheros, along with her parents.

“Elizabeth,” he said softly, kneeling beside her and putting his arms around her.

“It’s Jonathan, Michael,” she said, not turning her head.

“ ‘Tis not yer brother,
a ghra.
‘Tis Juan Chavez,
El Lobo
. Don’t ye remember?”

She turned to him then and gave him a loving look. “Oh, Michael, I am all right, truly I am. Of course I know who he is…now. But once, many years ago, he was just a little boy who’d seen his parents killed. Who thought his sister was dead. He called me Lizzie, Michael…. Well, that is not exactly true,” she admitted, when her husband looked at her in disbelief. “He called for Lizzie. He doesn’t know it’s me, although maybe we both have known at some level….”

“Maybe Lizzie is just some woman he knew, Elizabeth.”

“Michael, he spoke in Spanish to a Señor Tomas who clearly beat him constantly. He never mentioned his parents until he started speaking in English and then he said his ma had been shot, his pa and Lizzie. He even looks like my father, though I never saw it till now.”

“Elizabeth, this has stirred up all yer memories. Do you think you just
want
it to be your brother? There is no proof,
a ghra.”

Elizabeth gave a little laugh that ended in a sob. “That may be true, Michael, but I
know
this is Jonathan.” She put her hand on Michael’s. “He was only seven and sold into slavery, just like Thomas said he might have been. He had most of the good beaten out of him, I’d say. He certainly thinks he is Juan Chavez.”

“And that is who he is now, Elizabeth,” Michael warned softly. “Even if what you say is true.”

“Oh, Michael, I can’t bear it,” she cried. “Thomas found
me.
And you and I have had each other all these years. I should have tried to find him once we got to Santa Fe,” she said, sobbing convulsively.

“But ye thought he was dead.”

“Maybe it was easier to believe that, Michael, than to think he was out there somewhere.”

“Hush,
a ghra.
Ye were only fourteen. You had no money to search. And the likeliest thing was that the Comancheros killed him.”

“I have believed that all these years. But now, to find him and maybe lose him all over again, and he won’t ever
know
.” She was crying heartbrokenly in Michael’s arms and he held her tight until she was finally quiet.

“Look,
a ghra,
he seems less feverish,” he said, turning her around. Elizabeth reached out and touched Juan’s forehead. It was much cooler. “But there’s still the possibility of infection, Michael.”

“He’ll pull through,
a ghra.
I’m sure of it. Now come up to rest and let Sadie take over.”