The Haunting of Autumn Lake (6 page)

Again Autumn combed her hair with her fingers—listened to the cool breeze through the oak leaves and the cattail blooms softly drumming on the old covered bridge. She closed her eyes, and a vision of the wounded cowboy with the dazzling smile and clefted cheeks flashed in her mind. A strange craving overcame her, and her mouth began to water.

It was true he was handsome, but that was the end of it—or so Autumn told herself, even as his voice echoed in her mind.

Heaven’s got better-lookin’ angels than I expected
, he’d said. The memory caused Autumn to quiver with some strange thrill that raced over her. Oh, it was not poetic in any way, his utterance concerning angels. Yet the sound of the cowboy’s voice resounded softly in her ears, blending with the breeze through the trees and the far-off honking of the geese overhead to make her body and mind feel as velvet and soft as the cattail blooms that gently brushed against the old covered bridge.

Chapter Four

Gentry James moaned as consciousness began to make him aware of the pain wracking his body and the dry, hot thirst smoldering in his mouth and throat. He felt like hammered horse manure. As he struggled to open his eyes, the pain in his left shoulder and arm throbbed in rhythmic unison with the pain in his left thigh. His head hurt too, as if someone had shot him in the head with a load of buckshot and left it to ricocheting around inside his skull.

Again he moaned, for the pain in his body caused a great weakness in him that was entirely unfamiliar. He opened his eyes just a moment—just into narrow slits. But the bright light of a sunny day stung his vision, and he closed them once again.

As his brain throbbed with pain, he tried to think—tried to remember where he was and what had happened to him. Slowly the realization that he’d been shot up washed over him. He’d been on a drive for William Jones—driven the herd with the other cowboys in the company without incident. Without incident, that was, until they were moving the cattle toward some town he couldn’t remember the name of.

The gang of rustlers had come upon them quicker than lightning struck the ground, and there was gunfire. Gentry remembered shooting two rustlers—dropping them from their saddles and leaving them to bleed out while he helped the other cowboys attempt to keep the herd from scattering. He winced, remembering the pain of the bullet as it grazed his forehead, though he didn’t remember any other pain of being shot—not right off, anyhow. But he had been shot—four times, he remembered a voice saying.

He could feel the wounds now. Yep—he was well aware of just where the bullets had hit him. One got him in the left shoulder and another in his left forearm. Two more hit him in the leg—the left thigh and back of his left calf. No wonder he felt like hammered mule apples.

Gentry also remembered making it to the town ten miles ahead, falling off his horse, and seeing an angel. Well, maybe she wasn’t an angel. Maybe she was just a young woman from somewhere. But he still wondered if it were an angel he saw—for he was strangely aware that he’d stopped breathing for a time. He remembered having seen himself lying on some bed while an old, white-haired doctor worked on him. He remembered how the pain he was enduring now had vanished all at once, and for a moment, he’d experienced a freedom and joy he’d never known in all his life.

Surely he’d dreamt it. Gentry determined that he had—that he’d only dreamt it all while his mind was on fire with a fever or something. But trying to persuade his mind that it had only been a dream did nothing to convince his soul of it. So he tucked the strange sensation and recollection away and tried to focus on dealing with the pain in his body.

Once more he tried to open his eyes—slowly opening them for an instant and then another until his vision adjusted somewhat to the light. It seemed that as his vision struggled to clear, his hearing suddenly was acute, for he could swear he heard a voice—a woman’s voice, humming some almost familiar tune. The sound soothed him a little—even for his pain—and he turned his head toward the source of the bright light, the window. There was a young woman sitting in a chair near the window. Her hair was as pitch as raven feathers, and her skin looked as smooth and soft as silk. Her lips were an inviting rose-petal pink, and Gentry thought for a moment that he’d seen her before. She seemed familiar—and in the next moment, he recognized her as the young woman he’d thought was an angel. He wondered if perhaps she really were an angel. Maybe he had died, and the pain he thought his body was feeling was only the eternal hell his worthless soul had been cast down to. Still, it made no sense that an angel would be attending him if he were in hell.

Gentry groaned with the frustration of not being able to build one thought that made any sense at all. “Where am I?” he mumbled, figuring he might as well ask the woman the question—whether or not she were an earthly woman or an angel.

“You’re awake!” a lovely, rather lilting voice chirped.

“Awake or dead, I suppose,” Gentry grumbled. “Though the way I’m feelin’, I’m thinkin’ dead mighta been the better path to take if I am still alive.”

“Oh, don’t say that, mister,” the pretty voice said, sounding just like a warm breeze through prairie grass. “You’ve fought so hard. Don’t say anything about dyin’. Please.”

Gentry looked over to the young woman again. She’d abandoned the sewing she’d held in her lap when he’d first looked over to her. She moved across the room toward him, smiling and with eyes glistening like sun-kissed raindrops.

“Are you thirsty?” the young woman asked.

Gentry only nodded, for it did hurt his parched throat to speak.

The girl smiled and picked up a glass full of water that sat on a little table next to the bed Gentry was lying on. “Here you go,” she said, offering the glass to him.

It was then Gentry discovered that he had absolutely no strength in him. No strength to sit up in the bed. Not even enough strength to raise a hand to accept the glass, let alone grasp it firmly.

He did sip the water slowly, and it felt revitalizing as it tricked over his tongue and down his throat. He nodded, and the girl removed the glass and gently laid his head back down on the pillow.

“Three days,” the girl said. “Your cattle drive moved on to Denver…but Mr. Jones told my father he would have your wages sent down as soon as everything is settled up there.”

Again Gentry winced. No wages were left to him? How would he survive? How would he pay the doctor who’d tended him? He had hardly a dollar to his name! The drive boss, William Jones, was an honest sort of man, but Gentry couldn’t imagine he’d truly send wages back to a shot-up cowboy who hadn’t even finished the drive. Gentry was destitute—again.

“Doctor Sullivan said you’ll be just fine after some restin’ up,” the girl explained. “He said you stopped breathin’ there for a minute…that he was sure you’d died. But then you gasped, and the color returned to you face and—”

“I did die,” Gentry mumbled. “I shoulda stayed that way, I guess.”

“Now why on earth would you say such a thing?” the girl asked in a rather scolding voice that caused him to look up at her. She smiled at him, softly brushed the hair from his forehead, and said, “It’s autumn, Mr. James. Harvesttime is here, and all the world will soon be bathed in orange and crimson and gold.” Her smile broadened as she continued. “My daddy’s apples are almost all gathered in and sold, and soon his pumpkins will be ripe, and that beautiful pumpkiny orange we all love so much will be rollin’ out in his fields.” Again she brushed the hair from his forehead—tenderly tucked several strands behind his right ear. “I heard the Sandhill cranes flyin’ over this mornin’. They’re on their way south already, and I love to hear them callin’ out as they go. Don’t you? My daddy is pressin’ cider today too. He has my Uncle Dan and Aunt Myra sell it in their general store. They own the general store, you see. I’ll have to bring some fresh cider in for you. It’s the best apple cider you’ve ever tasted…of that I
am
sure.”

Gentry’s eyes narrowed as he studied her. She was an uncommon beauty, this babbling brook of a girl he’d once thought was an angel. Her dark hair and light eyes gave her rather the look of someone who wasn’t real. Furthermore, he could’ve sworn he smelled some sort of mellow spice about her—a comforting, somewhat alluring aroma that put him in mind of a warm and cheering Christmas Eve he’d once spent with a kind family.

“The harvest moon will come out soon too. You wouldn’t want to miss that this year, now would you?” she asked.

Gentry frowned. What in the hell was the girl going on about? Pumpkins, birds, and apple cider? Didn’t she know he was shot up, writhing in pain—with less than a dollar to his name?

Yet he inwardly admitted there was something about her voice and her words that made him glad he wasn’t dead yet. Fresh-pressed cider would be a welcome treat. And once he thought about it, he was glad September had come and begun to cool everything off in the evening a bit.

“So,” she began once more, “with all the beauty of autumn stretchin’ out before us, why ever would you want to miss it?”

“What’s your name? And why are you here tendin’ to me?” Gentry asked abruptly, for his curiosity about the girl was growing. “Are you that old doctor’s daughter or somethin’?”

“No,” she giggled. “I’m Autumn Lake. Doctor Sullivan just asked if I’d sit with you awhile now and then while you were convalescin’, that’s all.”

“Autumn?” Gentry asked, frowning with bewilderment. “Your name is Autumn? Or the season of autumn is here and that’s why you think I oughta be glad I’m still breathin’?”

“Both,” she answered, still smiling. “My name
is
Autumn…and autumn
is
here. And harvesttime around these parts is surely the best reason to be convalescin’ here in our town.”

“Well, obviously I ain’t gonna die again, so you can be on your way, honey,” Gentry mumbled, grimacing with the pain shooting through his leg in that moment. He didn’t have the time to spend on sweet-talking with a pretty girl. He needed to heal up and make his way to Denver—see if he could track down William Jones and collect some wages. “Thank you for the drink of water, though.”

He heard the girl sigh and opened his eyes once more—surprised to see that she still stood next to his bed, smiling down at him.

“Mr. James,” she began, “I have no intention of leavin’ until Doctor Sullivan tells me you’re mendin’ well enough for me to do so. Now…would you like another drink of water before I return to my sewin’ and you return to your restin’ up?”

Gentry frowned. He didn’t want some cute filly taking care of him. He could do what he needed to himself. But as he tried to lift his right arm to reach for the glass of water, he was humbled.

“Yes, ma’am,” he almost growled. “If ya wouldn’t mind helpin’ me one more time.”

She didn’t say anything. She simply picked up the glass, slipped one small hand beneath his head, and assisted him with sipping the water.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he mumbled as a wave of dizziness began to wash over him.

“You’re welcome,” came her soothing response. “And I would much prefer you call me Autumn instead of ma’am. Ma’am is for women of age, or at least women with thorough life experience, and I don’t think I qualify with either. And besides, I prefer to stay just Autumn for as long as propriety allows.”

Gentry was tired—suddenly overcome with aching fatigue. “You babble like a brook, girl,” he rather moaned.

Autumn frowned, pricked a little by his comment. “I’m sorry, Mr. James,” she softly said. “I won’t talk anymore. I—”

“I like the babble of a brook,” he interrupted with a mumble. Autumn could see fatigue winning the battle against his effort to stay conscious. “It’s restful and soothin’. Now, tell me about that cider your daddy’s pressin’ today. I haven’t had me an apple to eat in a long, long time. Though me and Rueben Shaker use to climb over the wall and snitch a few every fall when ol’ man Boyd wasn’t lookin’.”

Autumn grinned with marked relief. It seemed he wasn’t tired of her company after all. “I think you should sleep now, Mr. James,” she began.

But the fiercely handsome cowboy frowned and growled, “Tell me about that cider they’re pressin’. I haven’t had an apple in so long.”

Autumn frowned and felt tears welling in her eyes. How could a man go without apples? She couldn’t imagine life without apples! Apples with spices were what her mother simmered to cozy up the house on cool autumn and winter evenings. Furthermore, apples were what Autumn loved to bake with the most! Oh, certainly Autumn loved pumpkins—nearly as much as her mother did. But it was apples she liked to bake with cinnamon, sugar, molasses, and oats for a sweet, crispy-topped cobbler—apples she most liked in pies and in the apple bread her Aunt Myra had taught her to make when she was only a child. Autumn loved to eat caramel apples at the county fair each year, twisting the excess caramel on her index finger and licking the sticky candy from the corners of her mouth. Fried apples, potatoes, and onions was one of her father’s favorite suppers. There were apple tarts, baked apples, apple dumplings, applesauce, and spicy apple butter! How could anyone survive without a thick slathering of apple butter spread over a slice of warm-from-the-oven bread? Autumn’s mouth began to water at the memory of the apple fruit rolls her mother had made for the first time not so long ago. Even just the thought of climbing up into one of her father’s apple trees and picking a big, juicy, yellow-ripe apple to eat and lingering in the branches of the tree caused her heart to leap with delight. How in the world could a man not have had an apple in a long, long time? It was painful to Autumn’s very soul to think of it!