Sweet Prairie Passion (Savage Destiny) (23 page)

Outside Abbie and LeeAnn walked behind their father, both lost in their own thoughts. The only sound Abbie heard was a soft whimper, almost like the sound of a kitten crying. She turned curiously at the sound, and her blood curdled. Jeremy’s body lay under the wagon, and the front wheel had apparently already run over him. Before Abbie could scream out, the back wheel also went over him, across one arm and kitty-corner across his chest.

“Pa!” she screamed. “Stop! Stop!”

She stood there frozen, while her father struggled to stop the oxen, unaware yet of the reason. Jason Trent turned to look. He made a strange choking sound when he saw Jeremy.

The Haneses’ wagon, which was behind Abbie’s, had already stopped.

“Oh, my God!” Mrs. Hanes groaned.

“Jeremy!” Trent screamed, running up to the boy. Bradley Hanes reached Jeremy at the same time.

“You’d best not touch him!” he warned Jeremy’s father. “Somebody get Zeke!”

“Get Zeke!” another voice yelled out, as LeeAnn and Abbie knelt beside their shaking father. Jeremy lay there quiet, obviously in shock. He looked up at
them but could not speak.

“Oh, God, not my son!” Trent choked out, tears filling his eyes. “Not my son, too! I already lost his ma!”

Abbie put her arm around his shoulders. “Don’t, pa,” she said quietly. “You’ll upset Jeremy more.”

It was obvious the boy was badly injured, and her mind raced with guilt. Should she have kept a better eye on him? Should she have gotten into the wagon with him to be sure he didn’t jump out against her orders? She should have realized how ignorant excited children were of danger and reckless behavior.

Zeke’s horse came thundering up, and in the next second he knelt down across from Jason Trent, Olin Wales standing behind him. Trent was weeping, and as Jeremy shifted his frightened gaze to Zeke, his eyes filled with hope, sure that Cheyenne Zeke would know of some miracle to help him, the way he had helped little Mary Hanes. Zeke leaned over the boy and gently unbuttoned Jeremy’s shirt.

“
Now
what did you go and do?” he asked, trying to sound casual. But Abbie could see he was deeply concerned. He opened Jeremy’s shirt, and already the small chest was purple. LeeAnn gasped and turned away, while Abbie choked back a sob, trying to stay calm. Trent cried openly, thereby causing Abbie to worry about him as well as her brother. He had not taken his wife’s death well and was just beginning to recover from it. How would the death of his only son affect him? Would he blame himself for bringing the boy West in the first place?

Zeke ran expert hands gently over Jeremy’s ribs and down the injured arm. He moved the arm just slightly,
and a bone popped through the skin. Jeremy made no sound, but some of the others gasped and had to turn away.

“He’s apparently in deep shock,” Zeke said quietly. “He doesn’t feel anything now, but he will soon. We’d best get some whiskey down his throat if we can.”

“Jesus God! We have to help him! We have to fix him!” Trent sobbed. Zeke looked at the man with pity; then he looked at Abbie. He shook his head, and she understood. She covered her mouth and forced back the tears that tried to surge forth, but she wanted to scream and tear her hair.

Zeke turned to Olin. “Fetch a flat board over here from that busted wagon,” he told the man. “We’ll try to get him onto it without disturbing him too much and carry him into the wagon that way. If we pick him up loose, God knows how many more bones will break up. I don’t want to handle him too much. He’s broke up bad inside, and I think he’s bleeding internally.”

Olin turned to get the board, and Jason Trent grasped Zeke’s shoulders.

“You’ve got to
do
something for him!” he growled. “There has to be
something
we can do! Maybe … maybe you have a remedy of some kind! An Indian remedy!”

Zeke put a hand over Trent’s. “Not for something like this, Jason. The best I can do is mix up some herbs with some whiskey that might take away the pain … and we can all do a lot of praying. But what we need is a good doctor, and there’s not one to be had—not out here. I’ll do my best to set what bones I can set, but I can’t do much for his insides. Now you’d best calm down. If you collapse, you won’t be much
good to your son. He needs you.”

Trent wiped at his eyes and nodded. “I … reckon’ so,” he replied in a choked voice. “Can’t we … stay here? At least for the rest of today? I don’t want to jostle him around. Maybe by tonight we’ll know better … how things look.”

Abbie knew without being told that her brother would very likely die, and she felt compelled to speak to him before the pain set in and he became delirious and incoherent. She leaned close to the boy, smiling for him.

“I love you, Jeremy,” she said softly. “I love you as much as mama did.” She kissed his forehead. “You’ll be okay, baby. In just a few days you’ll get better, you’ll see.”

The brave little boy looked up at her and actually smiled a little, and his smile hurt her more than if he’d screamed and cried. She looked over at Zeke, picking up the little jacket still gripped in Jeremy’s other hand. She handed it to Zeke, wanting Jeremy to see so he’d know Zeke got the jacket.

“He … climbed back into the wagon … to get this… for you,” she told Zeke. The man frowned in confusion. “It’s … an old jacket of his,” Abbie went on. “It was too small … and he wanted to give it to you … for an Indian child. I guess maybe he was so excited about giving you something … he jumped out of the wagon when he knew he shouldn’t.”

Zeke closed his eyes and grasped the jacket.

“I … don’t mean to make you feel bad, Zeke. It’s not your fault. Jeremy thinks the world of you. I just … wanted him to see me give you the jacket.”

Zeke nodded, and when he opened his eyes they
were full of tears. Olin returned with the board then, and he and Zeke and Kelsoe carefully slid the boy onto it, but already the pain was setting in, and Jeremy was beginning to whimper. Abbie slid her arm around her father’s waist and helped support him to the wagon. The men placed Jeremy inside and climbed back out; then Trent, Abbie, and Zeke climbed in, while LeeAnn rushed over to Quentin Robards to cry against his chest. Abbie could hear Olin Wales quietly ordering the others to circle and make camp. Her head reeled and her stomach sickened when she looked down at Jeremy. But the next thing she knew Zeke had supportive arms around her, and she was quietly weeping against his chest.

Ten

Little Jeremy’s suffering was like a horror story for the boy’s father and his sisters. The child’s agony grew rapidly throughout the day, in spite of Zeke having set as many bones as possible, and in spite of the herbs and whiskey that were forced down his throat. Jeremy’s fever rose and his moans turned to louder groans, then finally to intermittent screams mingled with crying. These sounds cut into Abbie like a hatchet. If she could have taken Jeremy’s place, she would have. But there was nothing to do but sit and watch helplessly, as his gruesome injuries enveloped him, slowly sucking away his life. His chest and even his stomach grew darker and darker, and it was obvious he was badly injured internally. This was something they could do nothing about, and something that would most definitely kill him eventually—perhaps within hours, perhaps not for days.

Abbie’s concern was doubled by the fact that her father just sat crying, drinking, and carrying on about how it was all his fault for coming West in the first
place. The man’s guilt and suffering were overwhelming, as he carried on about not wanting to live if he lost his little boy. Everyone, including Zeke, tried talking to him to soothe him, but it was obvious that if Jeremy died, nothing could bring happiness to Jason Trent again. His fiddle lay in the corner of the wagon—silent.

Zeke watched Abbie with quiet admiration and agonizing sympathy. She was the only one who remained strong for poor Jeremy, the only one with the stomach to tend his wounds and stay by his side through his terrible suffering, and the only one to talk to him, sing to him, tell him stories, encourage him, and hide her tears from him. LeeAnn was no use at all. She moaned about the blood and the pus, the horrible purple chest, and the screams; and she threw up twice. Abbie told her to go stay with the Hanes until it was over, and of course, Quentin Robards was right there to comfort her.

His injuries tugged and pulled at the life inside Jeremy throughout the rest of that day and into the next, until by nightfall of the second day his arm had swollen to gruesome proportions and pus leaked from the spot where the bone had broken through the skin. His chest and stomach were also swollen, and he’d thrown up blood, a sure sign of grave injury. His fever rose until the boy was delirious. Throughout the night, Abbie slept fitfully beside him, with Zeke camped right outside the wagon, available the moment she might need him. The rest of the train retired grimly to their wagons, saying prayers and trying to block out Jeremy’s screams.

Abbie tried desperately to keep the flies off the boy’s
open wounds, but when she awoke from a short sleep in the early dawn of the third day, she gasped at the sight of maggots on his arm. She choked back vomit and tears as she desperately tried to wipe them away, but touching Jeremy only made the boy scream. She looked into his desperate eyes and wanted to scream herself, just as loud and long as she could, and she wondered if she’d lose her mind before long. She struggled to keep from completely breaking down in front of Jeremy. She needed someone to give her strength, and more than that, she needed an end to her poor little brother’s misery. To watch him suffer as he was suffering was asking more than a human being could bear. She longed to talk to her father, thinking to herself how he should be the strong one and not herself, but he was slumped over in the corner of the wagon, completely blacked out from a night of weeping and torturous heartache and a good supply of whiskey. She looked at Jeremy again, and she knew.

“I’ll be back real quick, Jeremy,” she told the boy reassuringly. She bent over and kissed his forehead lightly, bracing herself against the odor of blood, vomit, and infection. “I love you, Jeremy Trent. I do love you so. And God loves you. Wouldn’t it be nice to be with God right now … and with mama … and to be free of the pain?”

A tear slipped down the side of the boy’s face. “Yes,” he squeaked. Abbie smiled for him.

“The pain will be gone soon, Jeremy. I promise,” she said softly. “I have to talk to Zeke, and I’ll be right back. You want Zeke to come inside when we come back?”

“Yes,” he whispered. She smiled again and climbed
out of the wagon, thinking to herself that she must look terrible by now in her crumpled dress and with her hair uncombed for the last two days and nights. The sun was not even up yet, but the sky had lightened somewhat. She could see Zeke lying curled up on the ground with only a light blanket beneath him and a dead fire beside him, and she loved him more than ever for his loyalty and attention. Already it was this man from whom she got her strength, and she wondered if it weren’t a sign of the future.

But she could not think of such things now. There was only Jeremy to think about. She walked close to Zeke and started to stir him awake, but his eyes opened before she could touch him. In an instant he was on his feet, as though he’d never been asleep. He reminded her of a wild animal that always seemed to know when someone was close by. He glanced at the wagon, then back at Abbie.

“Is he…?”

“No,” she replied. “Not yet.” She glanced around at the quiet camp, everyone still in their wagons. “I … have to talk to you, Zeke,” she said quietly, “away from camp … so there’s no chance of somebody hearing us.”

He nodded. “Just a minute.” He reached over and, taking his canteen of water, poured a little into his hand and splashed his face with it. Then he took a drink from it and rinsed his mouth. He opened his parfleche, took out a small cloth, wiped his face, and then reached inside again, taking out a peppermint stick he’d bought at Fort Laramie and breaking off two small pieces. He put one into his mouth and handed the other to Abbie.

“Sometimes a body’s mouth needs to be kind of woke up in the morning,” he said with a grin. The remark surprised her and actually made her smile. Zeke smiled back.

“It’s good to see you smile, Abigail. This has been an awful thing for you,” he told her, “and I admire your courage and strength.”

Her smile faded slightly, and she nodded, putting the peppermint in her mouth. She raised her hand to her hair, which hung long and loose, blowing in the Wyoming wind. “I need more than this peppermint,” she remarked. “I’d like a whole bath, a hot one, in a real tub, you know?”

He smiled softly and reached out to touch her hair. “You look just fine. Let’s walk out a ways.” He put a supportive arm around her, at the moment not caring how it looked, but only caring that this young girl was carrying the weight of three other people on her shoulders at the moment: her useless and worrisome sister, her drunken and guilt-ridden father, and her dying brother. She had no one to turn to herself, and she must be at her wits’ end. He walked her a good distance from the train and through some trees to where they could not be seen, then motioned for her to sit down on a fallen log. She took the seat wearily, and he knelt down in front of her. “Well?” he asked. “What do you want to talk about?”

Her eyes teared immediately, and she struggled to get the words out. “Jeremy. There’s maggots on his arm now.” Zeke closed his eyes and sighed. “He’s dying for sure, Zeke, and his pain must be beyond the imagination. I … I asked him this morning … if it wouldn’t be nice to be with God … and with his
mama … and he said yes. I … I think he knew what I meant, Zeke. And I think you know what I mean. He’s suffered enough. This can’t go on.”

He opened his eyes and met hers, overwhelmed by the courage it took for her to suggest what she was suggesting. He reached out and put a hand to the side of her face.

“You want me to do it,” he stated quietly.

She nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks now. “It’s … an awful thing I’m asking!” she told him through her tears. “But I … can’t do it myself, Zeke. It has to be done … so there’s no noise—so even pa doesn’t know he didn’t die naturally. And … I thought … with you being so good with a knife and all…I thought maybe … you’d know a way to do it quick—so he wouldn’t even feel anything. I know it’s a terrible, terrible thing I’m asking … but it would be so much better for him … just to have it end, and …” She could not go on. She broke down into wrenching sobs, and he stood up, pulling her up with him and into his strong arms, holding her tightly and knowing she needed to feel someone else’s strength and power. It seemed they stood there a long time. He let her cry until it was all out of her, holding her the whole time as she wept against his chest. He held her until he felt her begin to relax in his arms, and her tears subsided.