Mittman, Stephanie (22 page)

"I
don't rightly know," he admitted. Maybe some little corner of his mind was
considering the possibility. There was the remote chance....

"The
Havasupai have stories about their ancestors. Men and women who a long time ago
just disappeared. Where you fell from—what did it look like?"

"It
was a bridge, sort of. A red stone archway." He couldn't believe it. How
could she know about the legends? He'd only just learned about them when he
stayed with the Pai.

He
shook his head at her.

"What?"
she said. "You don't believe me?"

Her
eyes were clear and steady, their soft green depths focused on his face as if
she were trying to read his thoughts. "And you just jumped?" he
asked.

"Are
you crazy?" The green eyes widened and turned to two pools he thought he
could drown in. "There were only rocks beneath me, I swear. I lost my
balance, and I started to fall."

He
had thought they were just stories. Like how the coyote brought corn to the
desert, or how the eagle made the first woman, or some such nonsense. He'd paid
very little attention when Navaho's son had tried to translate for him.
"In the legends..." he began.

"There
was something about falling off the rocks?"

He
nodded. What else explained it? He had been up on the ridge from which she had
fallen. But
she
hadn't been there. She hadn't appeared until she hit the
water.

"They
call it the Bridge to Somewhere Else. Their name for the river you fell in is,
roughly translated, the River of Time."

She
was very quiet, taking in what he had said. Finally, she asked, "Do the
people that vanish off that bridge ever show up again? Do they ever come
back?"

Truthfully,
he had never asked. He'd never believed the old legends, so why bother? And he
didn't know which answer she was hoping to hear. Since she'd come to him, she'd
been cold, hungry, hot, frightened for her life, bruised, battered, and dragged
around in dirty clothes while she took care of a baby that wasn't hers and
satisfied his own needs.

And
even though he'd taken time and care and seen the look of wonder on her face
when he'd brought her to that place a woman hopes to find, it couldn't make up
for what he'd already put her through, nor what might lie ahead.

"We
better get going," he said, rising and lending her a hand.

She
nodded and let him pull her up behind him, but the rest of their afternoon was
spent in quiet thought. They waited until after dark to dismount, an
outcropping of rocks serving as cover. He reminded Mary Grace of how far the
smoke had carried that first night in the canyon when she'd followed it to the
Tates' hideaway, and so she understood when he suggested they do without a
fire.

***

Mary
Grace accepted his reluctance to light a fire and call attention to themselves.
All day she'd had the feeling that he was nervous, expectant. Now, as they lay
together on the ground, she found that it was not just the temperature that
made her feel so cold, but fear, as well. Sloan Westin was worried. And that
scared her half to death. Even the warmth of his body snuggled up behind hers
couldn't take away the chill.

Thankfully,
Ben slept comfortably enough at her side beneath the poncho. But for her it was
too cold to sleep. She lay in the dark, shuddering, until Sloan's hand slid
beneath her blouse and found her breast.

"I
like that little sorta jerk you do when I touch you, Sweet Mary," he
whispered in the dark.

"It's
called shivering."

"Then
turn over," he said, spinning her in his arms until she was flat on her
back, "and give me a try at warmin' ya."

His
head disappeared beneath the blanket, and his breath burned her chest. Each
place his mouth paused blazed with his warmth. And each place it paused was
lower than the one before. Dear God, where was he going!

One
hand pulled her skirt up, while the other was splayed across her chest. When
her legs were bare beneath the blanket, he rubbed them hard, trying to warm
them for her. Each swipe moved closer to where she was sure he was headed. But
his hand moved further down her leg, and it was his lips that caressed her soft
inner thigh.

"Oh
my God," she gasped, and felt the laughter as he exhaled against her
thigh.

He
said something that sounded like "It's only me," but between the
blanket, her breathing, and the other things his lips were doing at the same
time, she wasn't sure.

The
warmth radiated out from some inner core, her legs, her chest, her arms, her
hands, all thawing and her face suffused with heat. She'd read about what he
was doing, even seen it in movies. They had dirty names for it on the sides of
dusty trucks and in bathroom stalls. She had been sure that it was something
she could never allow done to her. Something she
knew
she would never
enjoy.

And
here she was, in the middle of the desert with some man she hardly knew, a baby
asleep beside her, with her hips undulating and her breathing out of control.
His tongue was doing wild things to her, and her hands were in his hair,
grabbing handfuls, her gasps coming one upon the other. His tongue caressed her
most private parts as it had her lips, exploring, teasing, darting. She forgot
to be embarrassed. She forgot to try to stop him. She forgot to forbid herself
the pleasure he was giving her.

She
clamped her mouth shut to stop herself from crying out, but still the scream
came. A piercing wail that brought Sloan's head up, taking the blanket with it.
The cold night air on her nearly naked body sobered her. It wasn't her cry
filling the night. It was Ben's.

It
was an anguished cry, full of pain, and it scared her into crying out herself.
Sloan grabbed for the matches he had left by their side and lit one. Something
was coiled around Ben's leg. It looked like a twisted necklace with beads of
shiny black and orange. Until she followed it up his leg and saw its head, its
eye glistening in the match light, its jaw clamped firmly on the baby's thigh,
she didn't even realize it was a snake. It was like the one she'd seen last
night, but alive it was much more brilliant, and much more frightening.

"Shit!"
Sloan shouted, grabbing the snake at the point where his upper and lower jaws
met and squeezing until he could pull the fangs from the baby's tender skin.
Then he held the snake at arms length, yelling impatiently at Mary Grace to
give him his gun. He rammed the barrel into the snake's mouth. When most of the
barrel had disappeared and the snake was sufficiently impaled, Sloan held the
gun away from them and pulled the trigger. Pieces of the animal splattered into
the darkness around them.

Mary
Grace picked up the baby and jostled him in her arms, trying to calm him down.

"It
was just a coral snake," she said. "Nothing to worry about."

"Don't
shake him. Put him down as gently as you can and get my knife and another
match." Sloan used that horrible voice she had come to recognize as a
signal of danger or disaster. He had settled himself on the ground and was
waiting for Mary Grace to put the baby carefully into his arms.

"But
it was just a coral snake," she said feebly. "You told me..."

He
looked up at her, and she could see his eyes glisten despite the dark night.

"A
coral snake is just as deadly as a rattler, Mary girl. Now hurry!"

"But
you said—"

"You
were scared enough," he said quickly, dismissing her. "Hurry!"

Sloan
held the baby nearly upright, hoping to keep the venom lower than Ben's little
heart, while Mary Grace held a match beneath the hunting knife Sloan carried in
his saddlebag, in a feeble attempt to sterilize it.

"I'll
need some light," he told her, trying to keep his voice steady and calm in
the cold night air. No point making her any more frantic than she already was.
The baby had stopped crying. Now Ben busied himself trying to put his fingers
into Sloan's mouth. "Shhh, Ben. Stay still now, boy."

Mary
Grace followed Sloan's instructions to the letter, grabbing about for anything
that might burn and quickly making a pile as close as she could to the tree
where Sloan waited with the baby. After several feeble attempts, during which
he promised himself he would teach Sweet Mary how to build a fire along with a
million other things that refused to come to his mind, the bundle caught fire
and he was able to get his first look at the bite on the baby's leg.

He
examined the wound carefully, his intake of breath the only sound he made.
Beyond the U-shaped mark of the snake's teeth were the two puncture wounds
Sloan had dreaded. Examining the baby's pudgy thigh left him unsure about any
swelling, but at least Ben didn't seem terribly uncomfortable. Of course, it
wasn't the bite of the snake that did the damage. And only time would tell
how much of his
venom the snake had injected, and whether it would be fatal to the boy in his
arms.

"Get
your panties, quick." He was grateful she didn't ask why, didn't argue or
make suggestions. For a change she seemed to defer to his experience. He
forgave her all the other times she'd questioned him.

She
scurried back to where they had been sleeping, then groped around on the ground
until she found her underpants. As she ran back to him, she shook off the dirt
that clung to them.

"Now
get the blanket. Quick, darlin', quick!" While she ran back to the
blanket, he wrapped the band to her panties around Ben's thigh, restricting the
flow of blood up his leg. He felt around on the ground without jostling Ben and
found a stick that he twisted into the panties to tighten and loosen the band
easily.

Mary
Grace stood with the blanket in her hand waiting for his instructions. He took
the blanket and put it behind her, then leaned her against the tree, placing
the baby upright in her arms. If there were thorns or bristles, she didn't
complain.

"You
know what I have to do, Sweet Mary, don'tcha?" he asked as he poised the
knife over Ben's leg. At her nod, he pressed her back against the tree and then
pushed Ben against her so that he was steady.

"Keep
his leg as still as you can," he said, his hand shaking slightly as the
knife came in contact with Ben's leg. He'd skinned a thousand rabbits, hacked
the heads off a hundred birds, even buried his knife in one man's gut when the
need had arisen, but making the half-inch cut in his son's leg was the hardest
thing he'd ever done with that old hunting knife his pa had given him. The
baby's scream pierced the night like a coyote in heat and pierced his heart
like one of the Havasupai's poisoned arrows.

"Not
an
X?"
Mary Grace asked, as he cut two straight lines in the same
direction as the boy's thigh swelled. He ignored her as he tried to lower his
mouth to the wound, his stiff leg making the exact angle difficult. Mary Grace
could see him struggle and raised the baby higher until Ben's thigh was nearly
at her shoulder. Sloan placed his lips around the tiny cut and sucked as hard
as he could.

Ben
didn't like the sensation and kicked at him. Both Mary Grace's hands were full
holding Ben up. Sloan used one hand to steady her and the other to hold Ben's
leg still. The baby's free leg smacked Sloan's head over and over, not hurting
him but making it hard to stay fixed on the two incisions he had made in the
boy's leg. Still, he sucked and spat, sucked and spat, and then bent again to
clean the other wound, repeating the process over and over for what felt like
hours.

When
he finally stopped and released the pressure of the band slightly, he found the
contents of his own stomach rising. He took a few steps away from Mary Grace
and the child before pitching onto the ground between his boots what little
dinner he had eaten.

"Get
some water," Mary Grace suggested, lowering her arms slightly. They must
have ached from holding his son in the air for so long.

He
nodded and hurried to his canteen, ordering her to tighten the band once again.
After he rinsed his mouth he went back to sucking out the snake's venom until
he had to admit that they had done all they could and it was in God's hands.

He
settled them onto the blanket, the baby's torso up against Mary Grace's side so
that he was sitting upright despite the fact that he was very nearly asleep.
She slumped against Sloan, and he bore her weight, encouraging her to relax and
get some rest.

Her
voice was thin and small in the night air. "Will he be all right? He isn't
going to die, Sloan, is he?"

He
rested his hand on her shoulder and felt her icy hand cover his. "Put
those hands over the wound, Sweet Mary," he said. "Long as they're
cold they'll help stop any swelling."

He
hoped keeping her busy, giving her a distraction, might keep her focused on the
present, instead of what might happen tomorrow. It was obvious she was glad to
have something to do, something that would help the baby, but it didn't make her
forget her question.

"Sloan?"
she asked again.

"It's
hard to know," he admitted. He steadied Mary Grace and then got up to feed
the fire. Had he made one to begin with, would the snake have ventured so close
to them? Had he killed his son trying to protect him?