Now and Forever (10 page)

Five days was a while.

Before any talk could turn to Kylie’s and Shannon’s other “brother,” she went on. “We need to get Tucker cleaned up and in bed. He’s been hopping along and nursing a broken leg.” Her eyes shifted from Aaron to Coulter to Nev. Aaron was four inches taller than Gage. Gage was just over six feet and closer in size to Tucker, but Gage was a long way from home and there was no chance he’d have spare clothes. Nev lived in a small cabin next to Kylie and Aaron’s place, with the same long ride to fetch clothes. But Aaron had been staying here at least part of the time.

“Aaron, have you got a shirt Tucker could wear? He needs to take a bath and get to bed.”

“Now, Shannon, I don’t usually take a bath, exceptin’ maybe in the spring.”

She laughed at his teasing. “Tucker, you’re covered with coal dust. You’ve got to clean up before you can go in the house.”

He studied his hands and the front of his leather jerkin and pants, and nodded.

“I will clean your clothes if I can.” Sunrise sounded doubtful.

“I’ve got a nightshirt in the house that’ll work, though it’ll hang to the ground on you. I’ll help you wash up in the stream. Coulter, you want to lend a hand here so we don’t harm his leg?”

Coulter looked annoyed, but he didn’t ride off, which was a dirty shame.

“Aaron, do they sell plaster in town?” Nev asked.

Aaron thought a minute, trying to picture the contents of the very small general store in Aspen Ridge. “Yep, they do.”

“I’ll ride in and buy some. I’ve worked with it before. Shannon, you did a good splint, but it’ll heal better if we put a cast on.” Nev reined his horse away and galloped off. The ride in and back would take close to two hours, and the afternoon was half gone already.

Sunrise said, “Give me the horses. All but Tucker’s. I will see they are fed and turned into the corral.”

“Mine’s fine by the hitchin’ post, Sunrise,” Coulter said.

Sunrise nodded and led the rest of their mounts off.

“Kylie, let’s leave the men to it. We can check my sheep. When they’re done, you can help me wash. We’ll go upstream while they go down.”

Tucker guided his mare toward the stream, and everyone
but Shannon and Kylie went with him. After a few paces, Aaron turned off and went into the house.

Walking side by side, Kylie said, “The sheep are in the barn, Shannon. It won’t take long to check on them.”

Frowning, Shannon looked at the barn, then at Kylie. “Haven’t you let them out?”

“No, Aaron and I have been bringing in hay and shoveling out stalls instead of turning them into the pasture. We didn’t want any harm to come to them, and Aaron had to work during the day. A new land agent came to take over for him, and he’s had to show him around. We’ve decided we want to head back east before winter settles in. And winter comes early out here, so he’s trying to get the office in order. Since we couldn’t watch over the sheep, we were afraid a wolf might get them. I knew you’d be upset if something happened to them. And . . . and . . .” Kylie stopped and looked at Shannon, her eyes wide. They filled with tears.

“And what, Kylie?” It was all Shannon could do not to throw her arms around Kylie again, one more hug. But Kylie’s pretty dress was already smeared with soot, and they weren’t huggers. Not much at all.

“And I thought if you were dead, it was all I could do for you, Shannon.” The tears spilled over. “It was the thing that would matter to you—that I cared for your sheep. I know how much you love them.”

“Thank you.” Shannon couldn’t make herself care about messing up her little sister. She pulled her close. “I love you, Kylie.” They hugged and cried. Shannon realized how hard it had been to be brave in that tunnel. With Tucker’s
leg broken, the responsibility of getting him out of there, keeping that little cup of fire glowing, finding the courage to keep going when the food and water were running low.

She’d kept her spirits up for Tucker, or maybe he’d been brave enough for both of them. But right now it all hit her, and she cried until the weight of it all lifted from her shoulders.

When it was over she felt washed clean inside, and she smiled again. Now she only needed to be washed clean on the outside.

“Thanks for taking such good care of them.” Shannon heard the vigorous bleating. The sheep weren’t happy in the barn, yet they sounded alive and well.

Kylie had cared for her sheep.

Hooking her arm, Kylie smiled as if Shannon was the first glimpse of the sun shining after a long, cold winter. “Now, big sister, tell me again how you went for a walk alone in the mountains five days ago and came back married, and don’t worry one bit about going into too much detail.”

T
ucker had heard baths were bad for you. He couldn’t remember exactly where or who he’d heard it from, but it had the ring of truth. And for that reason he’d always avoided them.

He made exceptions, of course. His spring bath.

Winter was hard on the way a man smelled. And he bathed after butchering an elk and oftentimes even a deer. Messy business.

He had a time of it sleeping when he was sweaty after a long, hot day, so he’d go for a swim in a mountain lake a lot of summer nights. Not a bath, as no soap was involved, and Tucker didn’t mind cooling off.

Still, he didn’t consider himself a dirty person. And being coated in oily coal soot counted as being dirty. So he went along without a fuss and even planned to use soap, because he knew the soot wasn’t coming off without a fight. He’d
have even looked forward to it if his blasted leg hadn’t hurt so much. It was more than the leg. He hurt all over. Every muscle and bone, every inch of his body.

Yep, he was feeling mighty puny. In fact, if Shannon hadn’t given him that horrified look when he’d headed for her house and bed, he’d have skipped this bath, no matter that he was blacker than a walking chunk of stinking coal.

He’d never admit it to a living soul, but it was taking about all he had to stay upright. Tucker wasn’t about to complain, but if he were alone, he’d’ve curled up and gone to sleep right where he was. Instead he started shucking his clothes, and of course that always took a while.

He dropped the knife out of his right sleeve, then his left.

When they’d abandoned the boot because of splinting his leg, he’d tucked the knife he kept there into his waistband. That went next.

Then he got the one from his other boot.

He tossed the whip he always carried on the pile.

Then his powder horn, and the big ugly cutlass he liked everyone to see, the two of them he wore crisscrossed on his chest. They hit the ground together.

He had a hideout blade a little wider than a needle in a reinforced seam in his pant leg. He landed that on top of the others.

The lack of his pistol as he stripped off his holster was like an itch he couldn’t scratch. His rifle was missing too. He hated the small pile of weapons.

“I feel naked.”

“Your clothes are wrecked, Tucker,” Aaron said dryly. “And I don’t see anything for you to change into. You’re gonna
be
naked.”

“You need new clothes, that’s for sure.” Coulter looked at Tucker, wearing his coal-blackened outfit, shaking his head at the sight.

Tucker hadn’t thought of clothes. They didn’t seem as important as his guns, but he reckoned he had to do something. Ma could clean them up probably. If not, how was he going to get an outfit? He only knew one way. He needed to go hunting. Bring down a buck. Skin it and tan the hide, stitch together some pants and a shirt. By the time he did all that, he’d need another bath!

And he had to do all that work with no gun and a broken leg. Which brought him right back to where he’d started. “I meant I feel naked without my guns. I need to go shopping for a rifle. It’s a mighty dangerous world.” Tucker pulled the little leather pouch he kept tied inside his waist. Heavy with gold coins.

He tossed it to Aaron. “That’s my winter’s earnings for fur. I’m glad it survived my dunking. You’re riding into town all the time. Can you get me a rifle? I saw a Winchester .66 in the general store in Aspen Ridge and had a hankering for it.” He didn’t go to town much, but folks had attacked Masterson’s wife. That trouble had taken Tucker to town, and he’d spent some time in the meager general store. He’d noticed the few guns they had for sale. One had been a beauty, swapped with a homesteader who needed food more than a shiny gun.

“A Yellowboy.” Coulter’s cold eyes warmed a bit. “I
wanted to buy it too, but my Henry rifle works just fine. I had no excuse to buy another gun.”

Tucker smiled. “Well, the Slaughter River gave me one. Getting a wife out of this, and a Yellowboy. Falling into that river would be almost all good if it wasn’t for my leg and having to take a bath.”

Tucker was done stacking weapons and started on clothes. Aaron helped the least amount possible, which Tucker appreciated. No man wanted someone giving him a bath.

Still, he needed a hand for part of it. Aaron unstrapped the splint and assisted him with shedding the blackened pants. Tucker tugged to take off his leather jerkin, and stopped. It was stuck to his belly. The pain when he pulled harder almost knocked him over. All his aches he’d been ignoring suddenly centered right on his stomach. His head spun, and his stomach swooped.

“What’s the matter with my shirt?”

Aaron came close. “It’s torn up. What happened?”

“Everything happened.” Tucker looked down at the blackened leather. “We were smashed up against so many rocks, I reckon the shirt and my stomach got cut up somehow. I think I must’ve bled, and the blood dried the shirt to my body.”

“And you didn’t notice?” Coulter might as well just call him stupid.

“I was unconscious. Shannon pulled me out. She said I was bleeding. My head, though, that’s where she thought the bleeding was coming from. We washed down that river for hours.” And if Coulter called Shannon stupid, Tucker
might just shut his mouth permanently—if he had the gumption to make a fist.

Coulter didn’t say it.

“Get in the water.” Aaron spoke before either Tucker or Coulter could make things worse. “Let the shirt soak loose.”

Tucker decided he liked that idea better than tearing it off his already battered body. “After that first day, we were in almost pitch-dark, with a little light from the coal fire and our clothes getting coated in coal dust and oily smoke. I didn’t think much about my belly hurting, not with everything else that hurt. But now that I’m thinking about it, it’s mighty tender.”

Aaron helped him into the stream, and the cool water felt good. Tucker wondered for the first time if he might have a fever. He found a flat rock underwater and sat on it, which brought the water up to his waist. He wasn’t sure if he could stand, one-footed, long enough to clean himself properly.

He was mighty filthy, so he kept busy scrubbing while the water soaked his shirt. He tugged once on the shirt when he thought it soaked enough to let loose, and the pain that hit him was white hot. His vision darkened until he thought he might pass out. Grabbing the rock he was sitting on, he waited for his head to clear, then left his shirt alone again to soap his hair and neck, letting the current wash at that tender spot.

“You’re the owner of this place now, Tucker. What do you want for it?”

Tucker finally figured out why Coulter was still hanging around.

Part of him wanted to throw Coulter off his land, but it helped to listen to someone talk. Helped to focus on something besides how sick he felt.

“His name will go on the homestead claim, Coulter. That’s not the same as owning it.” Aaron, the local land agent, thought he knew everything. Of course, he probably did. Even so, it got old. “He can’t sell it to you.”

“I wouldn’t sell it anyway, Gage. I need a place to live, at least until my leg mends.” Tucker scrubbed while he talked. “I’m not real interested in what you have to say anyhow, since I don’t want to make my brand-new wife want to murder me on the first day of my marriage. I’m kinda hoping she’ll end up liking me.”

Sliding off the rock until he was sitting flat on the bottom of the river, he went neck-deep in the water. He dunked his head, came up and scrubbed, then dunked it again. Dark suds flowed away from him as he scrubbed his hair a second time. More dark suds. Yep, he’d done the right thing taking this bath. He ran his hand over his face. Ma had given him his yearly shave and haircut about a month ago. Though he’d never done such a thing before, he decided to shave again. Spiff himself up for married life.

“You two must know how to shave?” Truth was, he’d never done it much. A few times when he was younger.

Both men looked at him like he was a complete idiot. Their bare faces were answer enough. “Ma always uses my skinning knife. Do you carry razors with you?”

Coulter narrowed those ice-blue eyes as if his question wasn’t worthy of an answer.

“Nope.” Aaron grinned. “I suppose I could try shaving you with one of your ten knives.”

Tucker looked at his stack of knives, which he kept honed to a lethal edge. No sense having them if he didn’t. He reconsidered the whole thing. Much as he liked Masterson and Coulter, he didn’t want anyone near his throat with those blades. He’d ask Ma.

“You’ve got a cabin up in the mountains.” Coulter kept at the only thing he was interested in—getting this land. “Once your leg’s healed, take your wife up there. That’s where you’re going to live, and you know it. You’re a mountain man.”

Tucker decided he liked having something Gage Coulter wanted. Needling him turned out to be fun. Tucker didn’t really want to own land. He owned a cabin, true, but he’d never thought of buying the land under it. No one really owned land up in the mountains. Who would he buy it from, a mountain goat?

“I’ll ask Shannon if she minds you watering your stock here. I expect she’ll tell you no.”

“It’s yours now, Tucker.”

Tucker laughed. “Sure, it is. I’ll ask just the same, and she’ll turn you down flat because your cows will upset her sheep.”

“Sheep are the stupidest critters that ever lived,” Coulter muttered.

Tucker agreed, but he didn’t say so. “And I’ll honor her wishes. Mighty dry year.” Tucker kept scrubbing until the water ran clear. He tugged on his shirt once more, and with just a little resistance his shirt finally pulled free. He
took it off and tossed it toward the shore. He was dizzy and had a time of it pulling himself back onto the rock to sit. And from there he could see his belly.

Five slash marks in a perfect row. Claw marks. “The grizzly got me.” Not only got him, but a couple of the slashes were an angry, swollen red.

He hoisted himself off the rock then, feeling too wobbly to use his one working leg to stand, and swam to the shore.

Aaron helped him get up and hobble out of the cold water. “That’s a nasty wound, Tucker.”

Tucker, standing on one bare foot, found himself shivering as Aaron dropped a nightshirt over his head. It hung to the ground.

Masterson was a blond, Danish giant, and Tucker had no business wearing his clothes.

Ma came from behind the barn. Tucker blushed to think she’d been waiting. He sure hoped she hadn’t seen him without any clothes on.

Tucker had no desire to admit he was sick, not to anyone. He didn’t think even Aaron and Gage had any idea of just how bad he felt. “I think I oughta shave again, Ma. Can you do it?”

Ma fussed at him and told him to learn to shave himself, but made short work of the job. He caught a kindly look in her eye and knew his ma loved him and was glad he’d made it home alive.

When she was wiping the last of the suds off his face, suddenly she stopped and pressed the back of her brown, weathered hand to his forehead, then his cheek. “What is this? You have the fever.”

Tucker said, “The bear got me, Ma. Mixed in with all the other aches, I didn’t even know it. But I’ve got claw marks on my belly, and they look infected.”

“Animal claws.” Ma looked grim. “Filthy. And five days without proper care.”

She turned to Aaron. “Get him to the house and in bed. Now. I have herbs that will help. I will be back. Stew is ready. He should eat.” Then she narrowed her dark eyes at Coulter. “You help or go home. Today is not the day to talk of land.”

She rushed away, taking every stitch of his clothes with her. She’d left his stack of knives, but that still made him a man without clothing—other than a borrowed nightshirt long enough to be a dress. He’d never felt so defenseless in his life.

Tucker couldn’t rightly tackle her to get his clothes back. So with his broken leg without a splint and aching like mad, his belly on fire, his head spinning, his vision blurred, he let Masterson and Coulter help him to the house.

“You’re burning up, Tucker!” Even Coulter looked worried.

“Why didn’t you tell us you had a fever?” Aaron tucked him into bed as if he were three years old.

Tucker wasn’t all that interested in answering their nosy questions.

Coulter went back out and brought in his knives and whip and whatnot. With a clatter he tossed them down in a corner of Shannon’s cabin. “I saw the women, but didn’t tell them you were sick. Your wife has to clean up
before she dares touch you. I reckon if that don’t suit you, you can tell her different. You talk to your wife about me using that water, Tucker. If you don’t, I will. My cattle are thirsty.”

On that, Coulter left. Tucker wondered what Coulter meant by “I saw the women.” Shannon was taking a bath. What exactly had Coulter seen?

“How long have you worked for him?” Aaron asked after Coulter slammed the door behind him and galloped away.

Tucker shrugged as Aaron got him settled, careful of his leg and stomach. “Off and on for the past five years, I reckon, ever since he came into the country. He pays good wages. He’s a hard man but honest. He’ll take no for an answer, but he’ll keep asking the same question over and over, hoping to change the answer.”

Tucker lay still, finding no comfort for his aching body. He saw that the swelling in his leg had gone down, but it was so black from bruising, Tucker wondered if some of it wasn’t coal dust. He hadn’t tried to scrub it, but it’d been well-bandaged until he’d gone into the water to bathe, so Tucker doubted that’s what it was.

Aaron filled a plate for Tucker with Ma’s good stew, propped him up in bed, and watched over him while he ate.

“How are we going to take care of your stomach wounds with this huge shirt covering you?” Aaron studied Tucker, swathed from neck to toe in cotton.

“I dunno. Pull it down from the shoulders maybe?” Tucker said. He forced himself to eat as much as he could.
The stew was delicious, yet his stomach churned. He could eat only a little of it before he had to give up.

“I’d better go tell the women you’re not feelin’ well. I’ll act like I just noticed it.” Aaron flashed his smile at Tucker as he gathered the plate and fork.