Colton's Folly (Native American contemporary romance) (17 page)

He made a derisive sound in his throat. “First smart thing you did since you ran off yesterday. It probably saved your life. How did you get here?”

“From down there.” She gestured in the general direction of the gully behind them.

“Dry Creek? How the hell did you get down there?”

She sighed. “It’s a long story, and I’m in no mood to tell it.”

“Or in any shape. We can talk later. Now I’ve got to see what kind of damage you’ve done to yourself.”

His examination was gentle, but thorough. At one point she heard him swear under his breath, and she roused herself from the stupor in which she drifted. “What?”

“What?” His voice was harsh, causing her to wince. Then he said rather casually, “I was just wondering whether you were
trying
to kill yourself, that’s all.”

Abby groaned. “Why did it have to be you who found me?”

“Who would you prefer?”

“Anyone who knows how to be civil would do,” she replied wearily.

“Guess I’ll have to brush up on my manners,” came the quiet reply.

She raised one eyebrow. “Knowing Martha, I’m sure you had some once.”

He took her hand in his and lightly placed two fingers on her pulse, timing the beats. Suddenly she gripped his wrist.

“What’s wrong?” he asked with a worried look.

“I’m going under again. Don’t let me, please. I’m afraid.”

He held her hand. “Take it easy, Abby. Don’t panic. I’m here with you, and I won’t let anything happen.” She heard his voice faintly, then nothing more.

She awoke to the touch of his hands as he worked on her knee. She realized that he had moved her--they seemed to be in a cave--and bolted upright, only to be pushed back down by a rough hand and admonished by an equally rough voice. “Lie still, damn it. I’m trying to treat this knee.”

She raised herself slowly on her elbows to see what he was doing. A warm compress was wrapped around the knee, and he had others soaking in a pan of steaming water that was mixed with some odorous substance. When the compress cooled he removed it and gently massaged the knee.

“What are you doing to my leg?”

“Do you need to know now?”

She responded testily to the quizzical expression on his face, “Well, it’s my leg, isn’t it?”

“Don’t you trust me?”

She looked at him squarely. “Is there any reason why I should?”

He smiled ruefully. “Obviously, from your point of view, none.” He leaned closer. “Abby, I’m going to be honest with you, okay?” She nodded silently. “You have a couple of broken ribs. There’s nothing I can do for that except to tape them while they heal. You have a knee injury of some kind. It could be a torn ligament or torn cartilage, or at the very least a bad sprain. I’m treating that the best way I know till you can be moved to a hospital. And you have a concussion. I don’t know how severe it is, but though you’re extremely irritable
--” he smiled and touched her cheek lightly “--you’re mentally sharp when conscious. So I don’t think we need to worry too much.

“The best thing for you for the next few hours is to rest as much as possible. It’s no good for you to keep popping up every twenty minutes or so, asking a lot of questions, getting yourself worked up. I just wish you’d lie back and let me do my work.”

“I don’t like it when I’m not in control,” she explained.

“I never would have known that.”

“Don’t be sarcastic.”

He sighed. “Thirsty?”

“Yes.”

He left for a few moments and returned with a cup of something warm. “This is an herbal tea. It’s very soothing. Have some.” He held the cup and supported her with one arm as she drank the unknown liquid. She experienced an almost immediate drowsiness.

“What did you put in that?”

“Something to make you sleep.”

“Why?” she asked, the word more a wail of frustration than a question.

Without warning he lowered his mouth to hers in a long, gently passionate, almost consuming kiss that set her pulse racing and her heart pounding in spite of her anger and weakness. Suddenly he pulled away, and Abby stared silently at him.

“I did it because I intend to help you in spite of yourself, and in spite of the way you feel about me.” The silence that followed was potent. “Do you understand me?”

Her voice was low and breathless as she answered only, “Yes.”

“Good. Now shut up, close your eyes and go to sleep.” Abby did as she was told.

Hours later she stirred from her sleep, one hand touching the bandage that circled her midriff.

A voice spoke near her ear. “Having any pain?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“I feel like a mummy,” she whispered weakly.

He chuckled. “You have almost as many bandages.”

“I do?”

“Well, there are some around your middle, and the one protecting your knee, and the one around your hand from the six-inch slab of tree bark I removed and the patch at your temple.”

“You did all the work, and I’m the one who’s tired.” Her eyelids fluttered as she struggled to stay awake. “I can’t shake that stuff you gave me.”

“The sleep will do you good. Don’t fight it.” When Abby smiled he asked, “What’s so funny?”

“I told Penny the same thing the first time we met.”

“Well, you told her the right thing. Now stop talking,” he insisted.

“I wonder if Ghost is okay,” she whispered drowsily.

“He’s fine. We found him and took him home.” He checked her pulse and her reflexes again, then muttered, “I wish I could say you were fine, too.” But she was out again and never heard him.

When Cat realized she’d fallen asleep he left the cave and went outside to sit with his back against a tree, gazing at the stars and listening to the sound of the waterfall and the night creatures that moved about in the nearby underbrush. The air was moist and redolent with the scent of growing things, and the falling water made soothing sounds in his ear.

Suddenly the tranquility was shattered by a cry from inside. He rushed to Abby’s side to find her sobbing in the midst of a bad dream. He lifted her gently and held her in his arms, whispering words of comfort until she opened her eyes, her confusion and embarrassment clearly evident.

“Do you want to tell me about it? The dream, I mean.” His eyes held a worried expression, and she turned away so that she wouldn’t have to look at him.

“No, please. I’m sorry for disturbing you. Put me down.”

He looked down at her. In the firelight her face looked oddly exotic: blue-green eyes glowing like a cat’s; her long, dark lashes casting shadows at the corners of her lids, giving them an Oriental cast; the deep hollows in her cheeks, gaunt now from her recent ordeal, accentuating the bone structure of her face. He looked at her steadily, saying nothing.

Finally she broke the silence. “Why are you looking at me that way?”

“You’re beautiful,” he answered simply.

“Don’t say that. You know you don’t mean it.” She turned away, but he reached over and gently turned her back to face him. She stared at him, but said nothing.

“God, but you’re something,” he whispered with a touch of awe in his voice. “Lying there, battered and weak, and all the while shooting sparks at me.”

“I haven’t said a word.”

“Your eyes talk for you.” He took her hand and held it gently but firmly, despite her attempt to pull away. “Abby, I’m sorry I hurt you. What I said... what I wanted to say.. .it came out all wrong.”

“And what were you trying to say?” she questioned bitterly.

He ran his fingers through his hair in a familiar gesture that told Abby just how uncomfortable he was. “I was trying to say that maybe you just don’t understand how things work in a place like this, and that I couldn’t blame
you
.”
He stopped as he realized how his next thought would sound.

“Because I didn’t know any better?” She took his silence for agreement. “For heaven’s sake, Cat, I wasn’t hatched out of an ostrich egg! And I haven’t lived with my head in the sand for the past twenty-seven years. I have eyes and a brain and, believe it or not, I’m even capable of a decent human emotion or two.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then looked at him and continued. “What really hurts is that you took something I’ve never shared with anyone, twisted it all to hell and used it against me. How can I trust you with anything else?”

“I know I have a lot to learn.”

“But not at my expense. There’s been too much pain already in my life. I’m not sure I can handle any more.”

She slept deeply through the night, never once stirring. During the next day she rested, sometimes dozing, sometimes talking quietly with him.

“What was it like growing up in Twin Buttes?” she asked at one point.

“It wasn’t bad, especially when we were real young, before we found out what was waiting for us. We hunted and fished and rode, and went exploring clear down to the Black Hills and up to Teddy Roosevelt country in North Dakota. We were okay as long as we stayed with our own kind. Things began to change when we couldn’t get a teacher and had to go to school in Crossroads. That’s when I realized how much we were hated by the outside world.

“There was a kid by the name of Joey Little Horse. Small, quiet, used to carry a wooden flute on a string around his neck. Whenever someone got hurt, a person, an animal, he was always there to patch them up. He was in town one day
--couldn’t have been more than sixteen--some kid was lying on the sidewalk, looked like he was bleeding. Joey went to help him, and he got jumped from behind by a batch of town kids who’d been waiting in an alley. They beat him senseless and then, for a joke, shoved the flute down his throat. A storekeeper saw it, called the sheriff and went out to help Joey. Only by that time he’d choked to death. The other kid had run away, along with his friends. Later they found a bottle of ketchup in the alley. They’d used it to fake the blood. They never caught the kids. I don’t think they even tried.”

“Couldn’t the storekeeper identify any of them?”

“Couldn’t, or wouldn’t.”

“Damn!”

“Yeah.” He grimaced. “Just one wasted life among many, like Dorrie and Slow, who got married on nothing and have had nothing ever since. Like fresh, clean young women who grow old before their time struggling to survive, and strong young men who turn to alcohol to escape from hopelessness, or who fight and end up dead.”

He ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head. “
There was this guy I knew in the Corps, a buddy. When we got back we got involved in the protests, landed in jail a couple of times--”

“You? I can’t believe that.”

“Yeah,” he admitted ruefully. “Once for a week, once for ten days. Anyway, one day I was helping him organize a protest in his hometown about some land that was being appropriated for a power plant. The police came and somehow, I never figured it out exactly, a fight started. The next thing I knew Andy was in the hospital with a fractured skull. He was in a coma for five days before he died.”

Abby watched his hands harden into fists as he spoke again. “He
lived through three years under fire, only to be killed by his enemies at home.”

“He fought for what he believed. That isn’t a waste, it’s a victory. And Dorrie and Slow’s struggle isn’t for nothing
--their sons will have a better life. Even Joey’s death had to be for something. Just because we can’t see it from where we are...”

“I hope to hell you’re right, ’cause I can’t see any good in any of it.”

“Surely there are lives that haven’t been... wasted.”

“Of course. There’s Emma, with her Ph.D. in sociology, except she can’t use it unless she leaves here permanently and moves to some big city somewhere. There’s Art Devlin, who comes home twice a month from a really good computer programming job in Bismarck and lives in two different worlds at the same time, struggling to keep from going schizo from the pressure. There are at least a half- dozen of our friends, including two of my sisters, who we hardly ever see because they’ve left here to try and make it in the white man’s world. Real success stories, wouldn’t you say? But by whose standards?”

“Which is your way of saying that you can’t see any good in any of those accomplishments.”

“That’s about it.”

“No wonder you have trouble seeing me.”

She awoke the next morning with a start. She was alone on the pallet. Fifty feet away Cat lay thrashing about on his own bed, shouting curses and muttering incoherently, in the throes of a nightmare of his own. She made her way over to him and placed a hand on his forehead. It was dripping with perspiration, but his body shook with chill. She hobbled over to the fire and added wood till the flames roared and gave off a strong wave of heat, then went back to where he lay.

She could see him clearly now; his bare chest was bathed in sweat, and the hair at his forehead was soaked. She reached for a shirt lying on the ground near his head and gently dried him. Her fingers touched something rough, and she looked closer to find a scar on his upper chest between his left breast and shoulder. She touched it again lightly, wondering if he’d gotten it during the war.