Warrior's Embrace (54 page)

“I’ve come to help, Kate.”

“I didn’t ask for your help. I have a clinic
full of sick children, and I don’t need the leaders of the
Chickasaw Nation to tell me how to do my job.”

The old shaman faced Kate as erect as a war
pole, and just as fierce. With his face painted the colors of the
Ghost Cat, he looked like a man half his age. There was still power
in his limbs and fire in his eyes. Whether Kate knew it or not, the
Great One was not a man to alienate.

“Is Deborah inside with the children?” Eagle
asked.

“Yes. Somebody has to be.” Kate looked
pointedly at the shaman. The eyes that stared back at her were full
of enmity

“Why don’t we all sit down and have a cap of
coffee?”

“Coffee? I don’t want coffee. I want this man
out of my clinic and away from my patients.”

“I have had a vision,” the shaman said. “The
children of my people are dying. I have come to save them.”

“By rubbing them with mutton grease and
ashes? How can I keep a sterile environment if you bring that
filthy stuff into my clinic? I will not tolerate it.”

“Kate.” Eagle touched her elbow, but she
stepped away and faced him with her back ramrod-straight and her
face stiff. “I’d like to talk to the shaman. Alone.”

For a moment she looked as if she might
protest; then she relented.

“Fine. But don’t make any compromises on my
behalf. This clinic is under my jurisdiction. He is
not
to
interfere with my patients again.”

Picking up her charts, Kate marched out of
the reception room like a drum majorette in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day
parade. When she rounded the corner, her resolve failed, and she
leaned against the wall with her hand against her throat.

Eagle was just on the other side of the door,
formidable and delicious. Her pulse thrummed against her palm. Once
he had touched her there, kissed her there. She could still feel
his lips upon her skin.

Oh, God. How would she survive this second
invasion of him?

She ran a hand over her tired face then went
into the clinic, where all her little patients lay in a quiet row.
“Any change?” she asked Deborah.

“None. You’ve been gone only thirty minutes,
Kate.”

“It seems like hours. Damned that old
medicine man. I hope he sets his tail feathers on fire in one of
his sacred rituals.”

“Eagle will convince him to leave us
alone.”

Kate’s eyes narrowed. “You called him, didn’t
you?”

“Somebody had to keep you out of
trouble.”

“Go home, Deborah, before I turn my Irish
temper on you.”

“You’re exhausted, Kate. I can stay.”

“No. It’s my shift tonight.” Besides, Eagle
Mingo was in the clinic. She couldn’t bear to see him, and she
couldn’t bear to walk away.

She gazed across the room at the little beds.
“When all this is over, I think I’ll ride through Witch Dance
naked, screaming at the top of my lungs.”

“Me too. Both of us deserve it.” Deborah got
her coat. “Good night, Kate.”

“ ‘Night.”

Kate was at the supply cabinet, doling out
medicine, when Eagle entered the room. She didn’t hear him so much
as feel him. He still moved like a shadow, dark and silent and
beautiful. She gripped the edge of the table to stop her hands from
trembling.

She was too old and too wise now to cite
fatigue or nerves as the cause. There was only one cause, and its
name was Eagle.

“Kate.” She turned to face him, holding the
medicine tray between them. “The shaman will not be back. . .”

She didn’t give him the satisfaction of
asking how he’d accomplished what she couldn’t in the last three
days.

“Good,” she said.

“...unless the parents request him. The
medicine man still carries great honor in our culture, Kate. I’m
sure you can find a way to respect that and still care for your
patients.”

“What I’ll find a way to do is make damned
sure the parents don’t request him. Not in my clinic.”

“You haven’t lost your spirit.” His voice
seduced her.

Damn you to hell, Eagle Mingo.

“Did you think I would?”

“No.” His fierce gaze pinned her to the spot,
and he made love to her with his eyes. “I always loved that about
you.”

“Don’t . . .” She wheeled away from him and
started toward the beds, then, not wanting to appear cowardly, she
turned back. “Bucky and Mary Doe will be glad to see you. There’s
no change in them.”

“And the others?”

“I’m afraid for them.”

“Only the foolish are never afraid

“So you once said.” She tipped her chin back,
daring him to try to resurrect old memories.

“I’ve brought them something, if you think
that’s all right.”

“Anything to brighten their day.”

Moving quickly, she put distance between
them. She could feel his movement across the room, as liquid as
honey.

“Look, I brought you some magic,” he said as
he knelt beside his nephew’s bed.

Kate’s hand tightened on the medicine tray.
Always, Eagle brought magic
.

“How is it magic, Uncle Eagle?” Bucky
asked.

“Hold it up to the moonlight, like this.” He
held the small round buckeye toward the light so its hard shiny
surface glowed. “Then rub it and you’ll remember all the good times
you’ve ever had.”

Her knuckles turned white. She didn’t want to
remember. Forcing herself to move slowly, she set down the medicine
tray and escaped into the bathroom. Leaning against the door, she
could still hear his voice as he moved from bed to bed, explaining
the magic of the buckeye.

She closed her eyes and whispered, “Damn you,
Eagle Mingo. Damn you.”

Her face burned, and her body.
Coward
. Hiding in the bathroom. She couldn’t hide
forever.

Kate dashed cool water over her face then
hurried back to her duties. All her tiny patients were asleep
except little Lolly Turner. She was clutching the buckeye in her
frail fist when Kate approached her bed.

“I can’t remember, Dr. Kate.” Tears spilled
from under her closed lids and rolled down her flushed cheeks. “I
rubbed and rubbed ...but I ...can’t remember.”

“It’s all right, sweetheart. I’ll remember
for you.” Kate felt the pulse, weak and thready. Alarmed, she
strapped on the cuff. Blood pressure ninety-seven over fifty and
falling.

Lolly had been failing for the past three
days. Kate pushed down the panic that threatened to swamp her. In
all her seven years at Witch Dance, she’d never lost a patient
except old Mrs. Weems, and she’d been ninety-seven. She didn’t
intend to start now.

“Remember the birthday party you had when you
were five? Your daddy gave you a pony.” A weak smile played around
the child’s pale blue lips.

Don’t die, Lolly. Don’t die.

“And remember that time you fell out of your
tree house and got a cast on your leg and you had so many friends
you asked me to put on a larger one so they could all sign it?”

I brought you into the world, precious
child. I won’t let you leave it.

Lolly’s only response was a flutter of her
eyelids. Kate tried to find her pulse, tried to find her pressure.
Her vital signs were off the chart.

“And remember when you started school? You
asked me if I had any pills that would make you remember the ABCs?”
Kate talked rapidly. If she talked fast enough, she could keep
death at bay. If she talked long enough, she could bring Lolly
back.

Come back, Lolly. Please come
back.

The buckeye fell from Lolly’s lifeless hand
and rolled across the floor. Swiftly and silently Eagle moved to
her side.

Kate put the paddles to Lolly’s chest.
“Remember how you wanted to be a doctor, Lolly?” Flat line. “Come
on. Remember!” Kate applied the paddles once more. “You have to
remember.”

Flat line.

Eagle put both hands on her shoulders.

“Kate ...come away.”

“I won’t let her die,” she said, applying the
paddles once more.

“Kate ...she’s gone.”

Fierce and defiant, she turned to him. “How
do you know? You’re not the doctor,”

“It’s no use, Kate. She’s been weighed in the
path and found light.”

“She was just a child ...she was just a
child.”

Wild with grief and defeat, Kate ran from the
room. In her office she crumpled into her chair. Eagle came in
behind her and switched on the lights.

“I want the lights off,” she said.

He flicked off the switch, and she huddled in
her silent cocoon of blackness, feeling the electric presence of
Eagle Mingo as he stood beside the door.

“Leave. I want to be alone.”

“You need me, Kate.”

“I stopped needing you a long time ago.”

Her heart beat so hard, she could almost hear
it in the silence of the room. For a small eternity he stood beside
the door, and then he moved on the wings of eagles. His large
shadow fell over her, and even in the blackness she was
comforted.

“At least take this for your tears.” He
pulled a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and offered it
without touching her.

“I’m not crying.”

“Then allow me to stop all this water, for
the Blue River has left its banks and is flooding your eyes.” He
knelt beside her and tenderly wiped her cheeks.

With his hands finally upon her, the thing
she remembered most was not making love with the stars overhead,
but swimming in the river naked with the sun on her face and Eagle
sitting on a big rock, singing to her in Muskogean.

She let her tears flow freely, and, kneeling,
he wiped them all away. And when she gave one final sniffle, he
backed off, severing the fragile tie that bound them.

“Is the buckeye really magic?” she
whispered.

“Only to those who believe.”

She looked into his deep black eyes and saw
only emptiness. Silently he folded the handkerchief and pressed it
into her hands while the humming silence became a roar.

“In case you need it,” he said, then turned
quickly and left the room. The door closed softly behind him.

Kate slumped in her chair. Neither of them
believed in magic anymore.

Fox squirrels and rabbits and deer were
abundant in the mountains, hiding amid the fallen tree branches and
the colored leaves, waiting for him to take his twenty-gauge
shotgun and hunt them down.

But Clint had no heart for hunting. He had no
heart for anything. His brother and sister were dreadfully sick,
and he was well.

He felt guilty.

Home was not the same without Bucky and Mary
Doe, and neither were his mother and father. Anna cried a lot and
Cole was angry. They were in the kitchen now, fighting.

Clint tried not to hear. He pressed his hands
over his ears, but the hateful words came to him anyhow. “Three are
already dead, Anna.”

“I know...I know. Still, I think it would be
wrong to get the medicine man.”

“Kate Malone’s medicine is not enough.”

“His ways are old-fashioned, Cole.”

“Hers aren’t working:”

“I will not have that dirty old shaman
shaking gourd rattlers over my children!”

“Would you have them die? Would you,
Anna?”

His mother ran from the kitchen crying, and
Clint raced upstairs to his room. He turned the music on really
loud, but it didn’t drown out the sound of his mother’s grief.

o0o

Mick wiped tears from his eyes. One of them
dropped on the letter. He tried to wipe it off before it smeared
the ink, but he was too late.

“Dammit all to hell,” he muttered. Now Martha
would find out that he read Kate’s letters.

Not that she didn’t already know. Every time
a letter came, she pussyfooted around the house, looking at him
like a dying calf in a hailstorm, sighing and knitting. She’d
knitted enough damned doilies to cover Texas. He hated the things,
stuck on all the arms of the chairs, just waiting for him to knock
them off on the floor or spill coffee or drop ashes on them.

When she’d run out of furniture arms, she
framed the damned silly things and hung them all over the
walls.

“Mick?”

He hastily stuffed the letter into his
pocket. He’d take it to his office and pretend the maid threw it
away.

“Are you ready, sweetheart? We don’t want to
be late to the opera.”

Martha was dressed in a pink silk dress that
made her skin look rosy and she’d had something nice done to her
hair. Every now and then, when he saw her like that, he was
reminded what a beautiful woman she used to be. Still was,
sometimes.

“In a minute,” he said. He couldn’t go to the
damned opera with Kate’s letter in his pocket. He unlocked his desk
drawer and dropped it inside.

Her signature stared back at him.

Five years, and neither one of them had
budged an inch. He’d started to give in and fly to New York the
year before, when Martha went. On her little shopping spree, she’d
said, as if he didn’t have sense enough to know that she was going
up there to meet Kate. Every Thanksgiving they did the same thing,
met in New York, while he stayed home and had pork and beans
straight out of the can.

Not that he couldn’t afford to go out to a
fancy restaurant and buy a good rib eye. He wanted to punish them
both; so he ate all his meals alone with the cat. When Martha got
back, he’d always have lost three pounds, and she’d feel sorry for
him and spend the next six weeks trying to make up for being
gone.

Sneaking behind his back.

He locked the desk and joined Martha in the
hall. The opera was
Madame Butterfly
. Katie Elizabeth
loved Puccini. She should be here with them instead of out there in
that godforsaken land.

“Kate would have loved this,” Martha leaned
over and whispered.

For a minute he started to ignore her, as he
always did when she mentioned their daughter’s name. Then he
thought of all those little Indian children dying, and no one being
there to comfort his Katie Elizabeth.