Paxton and the Lone Star (52 page)

The knife plunged into the flesh just above the wound. Bright blood spurted. Hogjaw groaned and his jaws popped as he bit into the stick Elizabeth had given him. Mila turned her face away, and Lottie sat down weakly. Elizabeth thought she would faint, but took deep breaths until the dizziness passed.

“Get over here and help, Mila,” Joan said between clenched teeth. “Bring that cleaning rod.” Mila sobbed, but did as she was ordered. “Now hold it open with one hand and dab with the other,” Joan said, handing Mila a rag. “Gimme that rod.”

Hot metal hissed against flesh. Hogjaw jumped, but Elizabeth and Scott held him fast. “Last of that, I think,” Joan said. “Dab, honey, don't rub. Oh, sweet Jesus. Lottie, put this back in the fire.”

The ball had broken the bone. Her fingers slippery with blood, Joan picked out the ball and the three pieces of bone she could find. “It's the best I can do,” she finally said. “Let me have more of that water, Lottie. And the rod again.”

How Hogjaw stood the pain without passing out, Elizabeth couldn't imagine. He was breathing shallowly and pouring sweat. His face, ashen gray, looked worse than ever. Elizabeth winced at the smell of burning flesh as Joan cauterized another vessel.

“Ought to sew it,” Joan said, pulling the edges of the wound together and pressing a rag over it. “But it might be better to let it stay open so it can drain if it wants. I wish I knew more. Here. Hold this, Mila.” She added more rags and tied them snugly with a long strip torn off her petticoat. “I'm going to release the tourniquet now. There should be enough pressure on the bandage to keep it from bleeding too much.”

Joan's hands hovered over the stick twisted into the tourniquet, at last reached down and undid it. As the pressure eased, Hogjaw sighed with relief. “It holdin'?” he asked, trying to look down over his chest.

“I think so,” Joan said. She touched the edges of the bandage, peeked underneath the wrapping. “It looks like it.”

Hogjaw smiled wanly, barely enough to move the folds of flesh that hung down from his jaw. “Good. I thank you, Joan.”

“Don't be too quick. We'll know more in a few days. How do you feel?”

One hand raised slightly, fell back to his stomach. “I feel … fine,” Hogjaw said, and passed out cold.

“Well?” Scott asked fifteen minutes later as they sat around the fire and drank coffee.

They had splinted Hogjaw's leg, moved him into the Campbells' wagon, and covered him well. He was sound asleep with Lottie watching him. The question hung on the air while Joan considered. “I just don't know,” she finally said. “Pieces of bone broke off and all. At his age, I don't think he'll ever walk right again, even if he doesn't get blood poisoning.”

“What about moving him?”

“It'll be hard on him. We shouldn't, for a few days at least.”

Scott stared into the fire. “We can't stay here, though. The place is beginning to crawl with Mexicans. We're too close to San Antonio.”

“He's in bad shape,” Elizabeth said. “Besides, True expects us to wait and I think we ought to. If we leave … I vote that we stay.”

“Like the Kempers?” Joan asked. “Lord knows what's happened to them.”

“This is different.”

“No, it isn't,” Joseph interjected. “Those soldiers are going to pick up our trail sooner or later, and from what Hogjaw and I saw out there, it's gonna be sooner. The way I see it, we have to leave. Today.”

Elizabeth had made up her mind. “You heard what that messenger said. True will be along. You go if you want. I'm staying right here.”

“You know he'd want you to go,” Mila said, speaking for the first time. “You're saying the same things I did when you came by my cabin. I wanted to wait for Buckland, but I left with you. Come with us, Elizabeth. It's the only right thing to do and you know it.”

There was no more room for argument. They were right. Elizabeth stared around the circle of faces that waited for her answer, and dropped her eyes to her lap. “It all happens so fast,” she whispered. “One day it's spring and the sun is shining, the next, our lives are seared by blood and death. We go to bed safe and wake up to danger. If only Hogjaw hadn't been shot …” The breeze, gentle and balmy, suddenly seemed cold and evil. The morning sun, yet to rise above the hill behind them, seemed to have forsaken her. True, her own True, seemed further away than ever, and she felt lost. She inhaled deeply, raised her head. “I'll leave with you,” she said. “When do we go?”

The weather gave them an extra chance they hadn't counted on. By noon, it was evident that a late norther was bearing down on them. Joseph and Scott decided they should load up immediately and depart the minute the first winds hit. The idea was to put as many miles as possible between them and the nearby threat, at the same time that the soldiers were seeking shelter from the storm for the night. With luck, the soldiers would stay holed up for at least another day before they took to the trail again. By that time the refugees' tracks would be wiped out by the rain and they would have a creditable head start.

The wind hit a couple of hours before sundown, and the temperature plunged forty degrees by the time Scott and Joseph called a halt just as it was getting dark. They camped again in cedars, always the best place because the evergreens were plentiful and offered the most protection against the wind. The hastily arranged campsite was no more than six miles from where they'd started, but they chanced a fire anyway because Hogjaw desperately needed something warm to drink. It was a terrible night. The bitter cold affected them all. Hogjaw's splint was loose from the continual jouncing he had taken and he was in constant pain. Only when the splint had been tightened and he was laid in a small depression lined with warmed stones and grass and cedar did he finally sleep. Ruthie and Dianne were terrified and cold. They slept in the Campbells' wagon with the women. The men bedded down in whatever sheltered spot they could find to wait out the night.

The wind howled, and set the canvas slapping against the frame. The storm lantern that hung above their heads cast a pallid glow. Joan had taken the outside next to Ruthie, who lay in her mother's left arm. Next came Dianne, then Mila. Lottie huddled against Mila and cradled Bethann between herself and Elizabeth on the other end of the row of bodies. Sometime after everyone was asleep, Elizabeth woke to hear Bethann squawling. Before the others woke, she rolled onto her side and took the baby in her own arms. “Hush little lamb,” she crooned, “do not tarry. Papa's gone a'hunting and you must marry. Your husband will love you, my dearest little one. Handsome and gentle, he is the King's son.”

Bethann stretched and burbled, then slowly relaxed. Elizabeth hugged her close. How she envied Lottie. Elizabeth tried to imagine what it would be like to have True's child. No, she thought. Children. Several of them. Oh, she wanted a family. She wanted to be surrounded with children. She wanted a house full of laughter and love.

But all that seemed so far away, so ultimately impossible. She had no idea where True was. He could have been trapped inside the fort or captured and killed trying to reach her. “Oh, Bethann, Bethann,” she whispered, chiding herself for flirting so outrageously with despair. She pulled the covers away from the child's face and gazed down at her. Deep in the shadows, Bethann stared back, her eyes shining with the timeless wisdom that fills the eyes of infants—the eyes of God.

To lose hope … is to lose … everything.

“I won't, baby,” she promised. “Neither will your Mommy or Daddy. You'll see. And when your Uncle True comes back, we'll all laugh and pretend we weren't so scared.”

She couldn't go on. Words were too difficult. Lulling herself as well as the child, her voice undercutting the whining north wind, she hummed the lilting ballad. Soon, Bethann's eyelids grew heavy and then closed. Elizabeth watched over her for a long moment before pulling the covers back over her. Watched over her as if she were her own.

Her very own.

They called a halt the next night at an unnamed creek some fifteen or so miles to the east. More clouds had followed the clearing norther, and though the weather was still cold, it wasn't as bad as the night before. The creek was a dry prairie gully dotted with pools of water and treacherous drifts of wet sand left over from the last rain. Since it looked like more might fall, they crossed and made camp on the far side. Mackenzie and Mila began collecting firewood. Lottie took care of Bethann and Ruthie and Dianne Campbell while she started a meager supper. Joseph rode out to scout the area, leaving Scott to guard the camp itself. Hogjaw had rallied a bit during the day, but was still wan and weak. Grateful to be stopped again and on solid ground, he lay docilely while Joan and Elizabeth removed the bandages and checked his leg. The area around the wound was red, but there were no telltale streaks as yet. Joan began to lave it with fresh, boiled water, and then placed a salt poultice over it. “I wish we had some whiskey to pour on it,” she said, dribbling more of the salty water over the bandage.

“I'd die 'fore I'd be the cause of wastin' good whiskey,” Hogjaw groaned. His voice wavered with the pain. “'Specially just for a skeeter bite like this,” he added.

Neither of the women were convinced, especially when, by the next morning, the first streak appeared. It was a worried Joan who replaced the dressings with fresh ones and retied the splint before Scott and Joseph loaded Hogjaw into Joseph and Lottie's buckboard and rigged a canvas cover over him. “This is the last time we move him, no matter how much he wants to sleep on the ground,” she told them a few minutes later, out of his earshot. “I'm getting scared. We have to find help. Someone who knows more than I do.”

They tried. Joseph rode out to the left, Scott to the right. The scattered farms they found were all deserted, though, and the one small settlement they skirted had been burned out. During the afternoon they heard shots in the distance behind them. An hour later, riding hard and low, Joseph caught up to them and announced that he had barely eluded what looked like a whole company of cavalry out sweeping the countryside. Whether the patrol was alone or part of a larger body, he could not say.

Whatever advantage the weather had given them, it now took back. The ground was soggy and hard to negotiate. That night they risked fording a fast-running, muddy-bottomed creek before camping. The fire they built, small and hidden as it was, did little to cheer them. Hogjaw's wound was actively festering. Puss seeped out of it and the red streak ran all the way up to his groin. Joan drained it as best she could and soaked it in salt water rags, but although she kept her voice carefully controlled, it was obvious she was pessimistic.

Used to the chore of making camp under adverse conditions, they settled in rapidly. Supper was ready before dark and the women went off to sleep shortly thereafter. Joseph, Scott and Mackenzie divided the night into three watches. While Mackenzie took the first, keeping an eye on the ford, the only reasonable place they had found to cross the creek, the other two found dry spots and fell asleep immediately. Elizabeth couldn't sleep, though. True was on her mind and she couldn't stop worrying about him. The Mexican lancer she had killed was haunting her. At last, she slipped out from under the covers, pulled on her coat, and dropped out of the wagon. The fire was down to coals banked under green wood for the night. Elizabeth hunkered down next to it, stirred it, and warmed her hands. A heated twig burst into flames, burned brightly for a moment, and fell. The wind brushed the coals, set them twinkling with a living, dancing, red and white life of their own.

“Girl … 'Liz'beth … That you?”

Elizabeth rose quickly, hurried to Joseph's buckboard, and climbed in. Hogjaw's poor ruined features looked especially ghostly in the light of the storm lantern they had rigged for him. “I couldn't sleep,” she said, kneeling at his side. “You, too?”

Hogjaw nodded. “It hurts. I'm a strong man. Stronger than most, an' one who never did like to admit he was hurtin', but I got to now. Worse'n my head did 'cause it's goin' on longer, I guess. That an' the bouncin' around.”

“The buckboard rides smoother than the Conestoga. We'll be able to stop in another day or two. Find a doctor and all.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But that ain't what I called you for.” He pushed back the blankets and reached inside his shirt to pull out a buckskin pouch that hung around his neck on a leather thong. “Help me off with it.”

Elizabeth raised his head and slipped the loop free. “What's this?”

“Somethin' I kept with me ever since I come through this part of the world the first time. That was seventeen, eighteen years ago, girl. A long time.” He worked the bag open and removed a crumpled sheet cut from deerskin and worn smooth and shiny from handling. “Lookee,” he said, handing it to her.

The writing had faded and was hard to see in the dim light. She made out a circle marked San Antonio, an assortment of markings indicating a generally western course and culminating in an “X” that lay between two scraggly lines—possibly hills on either side of a valley. “A map? Of what?”

“I done me a sight of trekkin' in them years and since. Seen the elephant an' bearded the critter in his den. Found gold and silver and passed it by after takin' enough to get along on for a while. Lived with an' fit Injuns. Best of all though, the one thing I never forgot, was the valley I found that first year. Good water, good grass, protected from the northers. Saw it in the fall when the grass was all gold, like your hair. Gold in the sun.” He smiled, remembering. “There was a
hacienda,
too. Lord knows when it was built or abandoned, but the Comanch' told me that them that lived there up an' left one day and never came back. I reckoned that since I found it, she was mine. Filed on it with the Mex government. If you're lucky enough, that was long enough ago that they didn't get around to erasin' it during the recent troubles.”