A
s soon as the doctor left, Kate went to the kitchen and browsed through Joseph's collection of remedies. She had been meaning to throw the bottles out, for the sight of them brought back unpleasant memories. Now she was glad she hadn't. As robust as her husband had looked, he had been afflicted with frequent complaints, real or imagined, Kate wasn't sure. No matter. She had several medications at her disposal, and she intended to put them to good use.
After much deliberation, she selected a bottle of Fairdale Bitter Water, which, among its many other attributes, was supposed to purify the blood. She also chose some Swift's Specific because she had read an advertisement in the
Morning Oregonian
that claimed it to be the best blood remedy in the world, a good treatment for skin eruptions, blood poisoning, frostbite, and many types of wounds.
Then she opened her mother's journal and turned to the back where the remedies for various illnesses were listed.
Hops off the vine and seeped in vinegar were good for a poultice. Kate had hops growing along one side of the barn, and the vines were already leafed out. She sent Miranda to gather some. There was also a cure for fever that called for cloves, pulverized Peruvian bark, and port wine. All Kate had were the cloves.
She went into Joseph's study and searched his desk until she found his ready-reference cyclopedia,
The Little
Giant
. Unfortunately, it listed nothing about snakebite. She did, however, find the ingredients for a fever remedy, and since she felt certain Mr. McGovern would probably be victimized by such, she located the
Aconitum
napellus
in Joseph's medicine cupboard and took it to the bedroom with her.
Her patient looked so pale it frightened her. When Miranda came inside with the hops, Kate put them to soak in vinegar so she could apply them later. Then she went outside for another bucket of dirt. While repacking Mr.
McGovern's snakebites with fresh mud, she heard her wagon pull up out front. Well aware that Miranda would dash off to hide somewhere, Kate hurriedly finished with the mud poultices and ran to answer the door.
A thin, gray-haired man of medium height stood on her front stoop, hat in hand. Dim lantern light from behind Kate fell across his face. His skin, she noticed, was as wrinkled as the excess hide on an old hound. One look into his blue eyes told her he had heard the news. From the dust on his faded jeans, she guessed that he had come here directly from the fields.
"Are you a friend?" she asked sadly.
The man fingered the brim of his dusty hat. "Just a hired hand, but I've knowed him a long stretch. I worked for him on his place along the Applegate. Been with him goin' on five years now. The name's Marcus Stone."
Ordinarily Kate wouldn't have considered allowing a strange man to enter the house. Shoving aside her uneasiness, she opened the door more widely. "Do come in, Mr. Stone. Five years certainly qualifies you as a friend. Would you like to see him?"
"Yes'm." He stepped into the foyer and glanced uneasily around.
Kate pushed the door closed and led him to the sickroom. She stood aside as he approached the bed. Body rigid, his hat held respectfully at his waist, he gazed for a long while at her patient. Kate knew by his expression that it pained him to see his boss in such pitiful condition. With a ragged sigh of acceptance, he slapped his hat against his thigh. "He don't look too good."
Kate had to agree. "I've done all I can." She clasped her hands. "If I can just get him through this first twenty-four hours…" She could think of nothing more to say.
Marcus Stone nodded. "I'll help you. Caring for an unconscious man ain't no job for a lady. The boss'd scalp me if he knowed I let you."
Kate hadn't thought of the proprieties. She felt heat rising up her neck. "I'm a widow, Mr. Stone. You needn't be concerned about my maidenly sensibilities."
In a sense, Kate knew she was lying. Her five years of marriage to Joseph had not left her greatly familiar with the masculine form. But that wasn't important. Thus far, she had scarcely been aware of Zachariah McGovern's gender, nor would she be as long as his life was hanging by a thread. He was just a very sick man she wanted desperately to save.
"I still think I oughta take care of his personal needs. Widow or no, there's some things a man don't want a lady seein'."
Reluctantly, Kate conceded the point. "Whatever you think he'd want is fine with me." She thought of the spare bedroom upstairs and balled her hands into fists at the prospect of having a healthy stranger stay the night. Aside from her concerns about how Miranda might handle it, she had her own anxieties. A woman couldn't be too cautious when she lived alone miles from town. "I've plenty of room to put you up."
"A pallet in the barn will suit me fine," he came back. "I got me a tendency to snore, and if I stayed in the house, I wouldn't sleep a wink for fear of keepin' y'all awake."
Kate tried to hide her relief.
Stone seemed to search for words. "If he needs bathin' during the night or starts to run a fever and needs wettin'
down, you can holler at me from the porch."
Kate hadn't thought far enough ahead to consider how she meant to bathe McGovern. "That sounds fine. I'll appreciate your helping me care for him, I'm sure."
He rested solemn blue eyes on hers. "I'll do better than that. Until he's well and off your hands, I'll take over your chores here. You can't be nursin' him and runnin' a farm. Tomorrow, I'll mosey back over to our place and tell the hired hands to carry on without me until the boss is out of the woods."
Kate didn't argue. On a normal day, there weren't enough hours to get everything done. She thought of Henrietta, still lost in the fields, but now didn't seem the time to worry Stone with that. "It's very generous of you."
"No more than I ought," he replied. With a polite inclination of his head, he moved closer to the bed to look into the bucket sitting there.
Kate wasn't sure how he might react when he realized she had packed the snakebites with mud. "Have you eaten?" she asked, hoping to distract him.
He seized the bucket by its handle and glanced up. "No, but I don't feel hungry, nohow."
Neither did she. Running a hand over her hair, she felt stray tendrils trailing from the braid encircling her head.
Her gaze moved to the bucket, and she braced for a dressing down.
"Smart move, using mud packs," he said.
"I didn't know if it was or not," she admitted shakily.
"If anything'll save him, mud will. I've seen more than one bit dog wailer in mud and pull through. If it works for dogs, it should work on him." He clamped his hat back on. "I'll git you some more makings to use during the night. As soon as the mud starts to dry, you should pack on fresh."
Kate was so relieved that he wasn't angry over her use of the mud that she nearly smiled. "While you're outside, I'll gather up some quilts and a pillow. It's liable to get mighty chilly out there in that barn before morning."
He moved toward the door. "My hide's tough. And I can sleep anywheres."
Sleep. The word made her aware of how exhausted she was. After seeing Mr. Stone to the door and sending Miranda off to bed, she gathered some bedding and returned to the sickroom to sit beside her patient. As uncomfortable as the straight-backed chair was, she opted against bringing in her rocker. If she got too cozy, she might fall asleep. Unless she missed her guess, it would be a long night. Not that she would begrudge this man a second of it.
Studying McGovern's face, she searched for any sign of life. Aside from his shallow, rapid breathing, he still looked like a corpse. Kate's chest tightened with regret. If she had it to do over again, she knew she would ride to his farm and beg his help. Miranda's life had been at risk. But she couldn't help feeling to blame for his condition.
His face was burnished and weathered from too much sun, with lines etched at the corners of his eyes and deep smile grooves bracketing his mouth. It was a face that looked lived-in, one that spoke of joys and heartaches, hopes and disappointments.
Her attention shifted to the scars along his jaw and neck. She hadn't noticed them before and suspected she did so now only because of his pallor and because his head rested against the stark white pillowcase. The glazed, drawn flesh reminded her of the scars on Miranda's right hand, caused by severe burns.
As if her steady regard disturbed him, McGovern groaned and flailed with one arm. The sheet slid downward to reveal his naked chest and shoulders. Kate blinked. While she was out of the room, Doc Willowby must have pulled off her patient's underwear. Recalling how she had slid the sheet up Mr. McGovern's thighs earlier to repack his bites with mud, she blushed in spite of herself. The man was stripped stark. A tad higher with the sheet and—
She worried her lip, suddenly very much aware of her patient as a member of the opposite sex.
She scarcely knew this man, yet here he lay in her downstairs bedroom, unconscious and as naked as the day he was born. She imagined those dark eyelashes lifting, those hazel eyes turning to her. Now she was glad that Marcus Stone had insisted on staying to tend his boss's personal needs.
And if that wasn't idiotic, Kate didn't know what was. She was a grown woman with a child. A naked man shouldn't be a curiosity to her, much less an embarrassment. Memories slid unbeckoned into her mind, dark and shifting, like shadows from a dream. Joseph coming up behind her in the dark and pressing her forward over the dresser. His hands groping for the hem of her nightgown. His hardness thrusting into her. The panting sounds he made as he did his husbandly duty to beget a son.
As always, the memories filled Kate with a need to escape, and she shoved up from the chair. She set about tidying the sickroom and turned her thoughts to those first horrifying minutes after Mr. McGovern had brought Miranda up from the well. Kate had no idea how she had managed to get a man his size onto his horse and then into the house. Thank goodness there was a bedroom on the first floor.
His chapped lips working as though to speak, McGovern moaned again and tossed his dark head upon the pillow.
Concerned, she touched his forehead and discovered he felt feverish. Extremely feverish. Wasting no time, she poured water from the pitcher into the basin and began bathing his face. He muttered something and made a feeble grab for her wrist.
"It's all right, Mr. McGovern. Everything's all right."
Kate prayed those words wouldn't prove to be a lie.
* * *
Before the next few minutes were out, Kate had cause once again to thank heaven that Marcus Stone had insisted on staying over. Before the man returned to the house with the bucket of dirt, Zachariah McGovern had begun to thrash, and it soon became apparent that her patient was delirious. When she tried to anchor his flailing arms, he fought her. Even in his weakened state, his strength was great, and Kate couldn't subdue him.
"Fire!" he cried hoarsely. "Jesus Christ, it's on fire!"
Kate caught his arm as it swung upward and strained with all her power to hold it back down on the bed. "Mr.
McGovern, please. You're dreaming."
"Get out," he rasped. "Jump to me, for God's sake!"
Swinging with his free arm, McGovern caught Kate alongside the head with his wrist. The blow left her blinking away black spots. Left with no alternative, she threw her body across the man's chest so she could bring her weight into play. It wasn't enough. Tempered by years of doing heavy farm work, he threw her off as if she weighted no more than a child. She landed rump first on the floor, several feet from the bed. Pain shot from her abused tailbone up her spine.
She realized that her patient was now sitting up and looking as if he intended to stand. Kate scrambled to her feet.
She had just started toward him when Marcus Stone reentered the bedroom.
"Help me," she cried. "He's out of his head with fever."
The hired hand quickly stowed the bucket of dirt near the door and dashed to assist. Between the two of them, they wrestled McGovern to his back. Using the leftover linen that Kate had torn into strips for tourniquets, Marcus secured his boss's wrists to slats in the headboard, his ankles to the footboard.
"Snakes!" McGovern cried. "Jesus Christ Almighty…"
The horror in his voice was so real and he sounded so lucid that Kate cast a frantic glance around, almost expecting to see rattlers in the bedroom. McGovern strained against the bindings that held his arms. She knew that in his mind, he was back inside the well, surrounded by vipers. The terror she read in his glazed, hazel eyes tore at her. Until that instant, she hadn't truly realized what it had cost him to go into that well after her daughter.
He gave one last violent pull against the bindings, the veins in his neck and face bulging with the strain. A trickle of blood came from his nose, and when he finally threw back his head in defeat, Kate saw watery pinkness streaming from his eyes.
"Oh, dear God."
Marcus Stone made an inarticulate sound that bespoke the shock he felt.
"It's one of the symptoms," Kate hastened to assure him. "Doc warned me. The venom thins the blood." She scooted closer and used a strip of unused linen to wipe her patient's face. "Oh, Mr. McGovern. There are no snakes. Shhhh." Kate smoothed damp waves of dark hair from his brow. "It's all right. There are no snakes."
Still winded from the struggle, Marcus Stone stood by the bed. "It might help if you called him by his first name."
"Zachariah," she said softly. "It's all right. Truly it is. You're out of the well and safe now."
The soothing tone of her voice seemed to have the desired effect. The tension eased from McGovern's body, and after a moment, he closed his eyes. Kate pushed wearily to her feet.
Concerned, Marcus asked, "You okay? Looks like he thumped you a good one."
With a nod, Kate straightened her bodice and skirt. "It's him I'm worried about. He's burning up."
Marcus touched a hand to his boss's forehead. "Ain't he just. We gotta cool him down."
Stone had no sooner spoken than McGovern suddenly arched off the bed. His body began to jerk. For a moment, Kate just stood there, frozen and mindless. The clacking and grinding of McGovern's teeth finally jerked her back to her senses. "Oh, lands, he's being taken with fits."
Marcus raced from the room. Moments later, he returned with a galvanized basin from the kitchen, which he had filled with water. Tearing back the sheet, he began wringing a wet rag over his boss's body. Kate had a vague impression of long, muscular limbs spread-eagled on the bed, of a torso roped with muscle, and of—
She jerked her gaze from the dusky juncture of McGovern's thighs. A body was just that, a body. His was just made a tad differently than hers, and now was no time to note the dissimilarities. She grabbed the cloth she had used earlier and began helping Marcus Stone wet McGovern's feverish skin.
From that second on, Kate did what she had to do, the devil take propriety. Marcus Stone made no more mention of what ladies should or shouldn't see.
They were all that stood between Zachariah McGovern and death.