Beverly Jenkins (22 page)

After leaving the train at Ellis, Chase rode Carolina the last thirty miles to Henry Adams under the rising sun. In the distance, light painted the prairie skyline with fiery pinks and reds. He was too bone-tired to appreciate nature’s canvas. He could barely sit Carolina. However, his strength seemed to return as soon as he reached the outskirts of town, bringing with it a heartfelt certainty that Cara still lived. He had no idea why he felt so confident, but he did; if she were already dead, he’d know.

Asa answered Chase’s summons to the door. They embraced each other, then hurried through to Sophie’s office where she was seated behind her desk sipping coffee. She came hastily to him, and the hug they shared was tight with emotion and pain.

“Chase, oh, thank heaven you’re here. I’m so glad, so glad,” she whispered with tears in her eyes.

“I left Texas as soon as I got word.” Chase saw that she looked more tired—old, really, worn-out—than he’d ever seen her. “How is Cara?”

“She didn’t have a good night, but Doc Johnson is with her now. You can see her when he’s done.”

Chase remembered meeting Johnson the night of the Black Widow’s birthday. “How’d she lose the baby?”

“Nobody’s real sure, but Sheriff Polk says he heard her screaming and when he got to her she was lying”—Sophie’s voice cracked—“on the walk, out cold. Miles Sutton was standing over her.”

Chase went deathly still. “What was he doing there?”

“He was drunk,” Asa said. “He went in to some kind of song and dance about how he’d wanted Miss Cara to help him celebrate a business deal with him, and she fell off his horse.”

“She fell? Cara’s been around horses all her life. I don’t believe that. What’s Cara say?”

Sophie shook her head. “Nothing. So far she’s still too ill.”

“Well, I’m not. He in town?”

“Yes, he is, and the sheriff is handling it,” Sophie cautioned. “Cara’s our main concern right now. We don’t care what you do to him once she’s well, but we don’t have time to keep your head out of a noose, Chase.”

Chase knew she was right. Sheriff Polk had impressed him as a fair man. Sutton wouldn’t be allowed to leave town until the investigation was complete. But the thought of Sutton having a part in Cara losing the child made him want to kill the man with his bare hands.

“Chase . . .” Sophie called softly.

Chase came out from behind the veil of rage.

“How long can you stay?” she asked.

“Until she’s well enough for me to leave her.”

“Well, I’ll put you back in the room next door, is that all right?”

He nodded, then fished the telegrams out of his pocket and handed her the one that mentioned California. “Tell me about this.”

Sophie read it and looked up at him. “Chase, you have to understand the hell she went through when the people found out she was in a family way.”

“Sophie. What does this telegram mean?” he said impatiently.

Sophie and Asa shared a speaking look, then
Sophie added, “She was planning to leave for California the morning after the accident.”

“Why?”

“She was going to live there,” Asa added.

Chase looked to Sophie and then to Asa before asking in a raised voice, “Was she planning on telling me about the baby?”

“Chase, listen, she was—”

“Was she going to tell me about the baby?”

“No,” Sophie replied quietly.

He slammed his fist down on the desk, scattering the contents. “That was my child, too! My child! Did she actually believe she’d get away with it?”

“Chase, I don’t believe she was thinking—”

“Damn right!” Chase’s gut churned with betrayal and pain. Damn her! “Do you think I should have been told?”

“Yes. That’s why I sent the first telegram. But Chase, you have to—”

“I rode in a damn cattle car all the way from Texas, worrying the whole way, and you say she wasn’t going to tell me about my own child?”

“She didn’t want your pity.”

“I came back here to marry her! Give her my name!”

“I know, Chase.”

“No, you don’t Sophie,” he whispered icily. He wanted to break something. Rage seemed to be exploding from every pore in his body. He wanted to confront Cara. What would have been her answer to the child’s natural curiosity about its missing parent? Had she planned to lie, to say the father was dead? Chase could think of no reason why she would decide to keep quiet, move . . . and, no, they’d never discussed the possibility of a child, but dammit, she should have told him.

The doctor came in then. “Delbert,” Sophie asked, “how’s she doing?”

“As well as can be expected, I guess.” He skewered Chase with an angry, scornful stare. “What are you doing here?”

Chase’s jaw tightened at the man’s tone. “Just stick to doctoring. How is she?”

Delbert looked into the frigid eyes and said, “If her fever doesn’t come down, we may lose her.”

“I want to see her.”

“She won’t know you’re there.”

“I don’t care.” Chase paused only a second, then bolted out of the office and up to Cara’s room. The familiarity of it swept him up. He walked to where she lay. Stunned and speechless, he knelt beside the bed. He searched the gaunt, terribly still figure smothered beneath piles of quilts for some resemblance to the woman he’d known. The glowing skin and fiery nature were gone. The sickness held her. Chase did not have to be a doctor to know she was gravely ill. He ran his fingers over her delicate brow, saw the ugly gash above her eye, felt the feverish skin. He called her name softly.

Cara heard her name . . . recognized the voice . . . oh, her grandfather had every right to be angry at her for eating all those green plums, and now she was sick, and . . .

“Cara Lee?”

“Papa, it hurts so much . . .”

“I know, darlin’, I’m here.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“Nobody can stay mad at you for long. Just rest now.” He picked up the cloth in the basin beside the bed.

Cara relaxed as something magically cool
stroked away the heat on her forehead. “I didn’t mean to be a bad girl.”

“I know, sweetheart. I know.”

Emotions clogged Chase’s throat as he gently mopped Cara’s fevered brow and cheeks. She was burning up with fever. If it didn’t break soon, she would surely die. Setting aside the cloth as she drifted back into a troubled sleep, he placed a fleeting kiss upon the pale brow and tiptoed out of the room.

Downstairs, a somber Chase consulted with the doctor, and the argument that followed had both men shouting at the tops of their lungs. The doctor wanted to hear nothing about an Indian remedy to lower the fever. He didn’t care if Chase had seen it used successfully. He didn’t care if Chase and his men had administered the cure hundreds of times. He refused to risk killing her with some redskin concoction. The young doctor then challenged Chase’s right even to be involved in her care, and Asa had to step between the two to keep Chase from pounding a fist in the physician’s face.

All of Asa and Sophie’s efforts to calm them down were futile. Chase shouted and the doctor threatened Chase with the law. It was Chase who’d finally had enough. He pushed everyone aside and angrily proceeded back up the stairs. He had no intention of letting the doctor’s ignorance and prejudice kill Cara.

When he opened her door and stepped into the silent room, some of his anger drained away. He walked over and, careful not to jostle her unnecessarily, lifted her slight weight, covering and all, into his strong arms. He kissed her forehead tenderly and started walking. He didn’t stop to reply to the outraged questions of Sophie and the others.
Down the stairs he went, quilts trailing, Sophie, Asa, and the doctor running behind him.

The cold November air bit his cheeks, but he paid it no mind. His concern centered on getting Cara to the Sutton Hotel where he could personally see to her; he knew he could have stayed at Sophie’s, but his anger was ruling now.

Chase gave polite nods to the curious townspeople who turned and stared at the small, noisy procession, but he didn’t stop. Only when he happened upon Sybil Whitfield, the reverend’s wife, did he halt.

“Mrs. Whitfield.”

“Sergeant Jefferson.”

“I’m on my way to the hotel. Will you and your husband visit me at your earliest convenience?”

He didn’t wait for an answer.

People began to gather, and once again events surrounding the ex-schoolteacher put the town in an uproar.

Inside the hotel, Chase barked at the attendant behind the desk to get Virginia. He obeyed, quickly. When Virginia stepped out, Chase didn’t wait for her to finish her greeting. “I want your biggest suite, and I want it now.”

She took one look at his face and the bundle in his arms, and obeyed without a word.

Inside the suite, Chase placed his light burden down on the bed and made sure she was covered adequately. He then removed from his belt the small rawhide bag he always wore and shook took out the pieces of willow bark inside. The bark was one of the many plant medicinals the Indians used. Chase and his men relied heavily on those few roots and herbs the Indians had taught them to find and prepare, especially since the Tenth was not high on the army’s list of units receiving medical
shipments. Besides, the remedies worked. Had it not been for “redskin concoctions,” a lot more of his men would be dead today from wounds, infections, and the parasites that lived in fouled lakes and streams. With a drink made from this bark, Cara would have a fighting chance.

Downstairs, Chase found Asa, Sophie, the irate Dr. Johnson, and the Whitfields talking quietly with Virginia Sutton. He dismissed the doctor, told Virginia to wait, and sent the others up to the suite with Cara. He made Virginia take him to the kitchen. Once there he gave her and her staff specific instructions as to how the tender inner bark should be steeped. He also asked that a thin vegetable broth be kept hot for Cara day and night. He slapped down five gold double eagles, one hundred dollars, on the counter to ensure his wishes would be followed, and walked out.

Chase marched into the suite and declared his intent. “I want to marry her. Now.”

“You can’t,” Sophie said. “Wait until she’s well. She can’t even speak her vows.”

“Now, Sophie. The reverend’s wife can say her vows.”

Silence fell, broken at last by Sybil. “Sergeant, you can’t be serious. I don’t even know if what you’re proposing is legal.”

“I don’t care. Either marry us, or what little bit of reputation she has left won’t be worth a damn, because I’m going to be staying in this suite with her until she either recovers or dies.”

The ceremony did not take long. Sybil did speak Cara’s vows, and, when the Reverend closed the Bible and pronounced the deed done, Chase walked them all to the door. Sybil, never one to bite her tongue, had something to say before he ushered them out. “You’re very angry now, Sergeant.
I hope you won’t use this marriage to punish our Cara. She has just lost a child.”

“So have I, Mrs. Whitfield. So I really don’t need your advice.”

Sophie gasped. “Chase!”

Chase turned to Asa. “Take Sophie home, Asa.”

For three days Chase spoon-fed Cara the bark tea and thin broth. He’d moved her from the bed to a pallet he’d had the hotel staff place on the floor in front of the room’s big fireplace. Having her near the fire made the task of sponging her down safer. In her already weakened state the last thing she needed was to get chilled, maybe contract pneumonia, but he had to sponge her down to lower the fever. On the first night, she put up a feeble, delirium-fed attempt to fight him off when he began to remove her sweat-drenched gown. Moans accented her struggles, but he calmed her by speaking softly and reassuringly, all the while stroking her forehead with a cool cloth. He couldn’t be certain she understood, but moments later she drifted back to sleep.

He saw to her every need and wouldn’t let another soul touch her. He ignored Sophie’s offers to sit with Cara while he got some rest; after the second day she grew tired of arguing and let the matter drop.

At night, when darkness filled the rooms, he watched his wife sleep and played the flute. The mournful, emotion-laced notes of the
siyotanka
said the words he could not. The melancholy beauty of the music floated pure in the after-midnight silence of the hotel, touching all who heard it with its despair, pain, and grief. And each dawn, when light began to fill the room, he put
away the flute and gave thanks that Cara had been granted another day.

On the night of the fourth day, the sounds of Cara stirring roused him from half sleep. Every night she’d had nightmares about her grandfather’s death, and every night Chase had held her in his arms until the demons passed. Tonight he sensed something different about her fretfulness. Shaking himself to fuller awareness, he took the flute from his lap and made his way over to where she lay before the fire.

Cara decided she must be dreaming. Why else would Chase Jefferson be kneeling beside her? That would also account for the
siyotanka
music she’d heard. She’d dreamed of both many times. Could one dream having a throat as parched as hers felt? As she forced her cottony mind to make sense of it all, she struggled to raise herself to a sitting position, winced with the pain, and heard him say, “Easy now.” He sounded so real! “Welcome back to the land of the living,” he added.

Cara focused on his eyes, sparkling at her in the dark, and knew this was no dream. She also noted for the first time the absolute unfamiliarity of the room. “Where am I? Oh, water first, please . . .”

He obliged, helping her sit up to sip from the cup he held. “We’re at the Sutton Hotel.”

After she’d drunk all she could, he took the cup from her lips and eased her back down. She felt as weak as a newborn. “Why are we here?”

“So I can take care of you.”

For Cara, it all came back in a rush: Miles, the horse . . . her baby. “I lost the baby, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

Even in the faint light he could see the tears
start rolling down her cheeks. She turned to the fire. “Why are you here?”

“To make an honest woman of you.”

“No, thank you. You aren’t husband cloth, remember?”

“Too late. It’s already done.”