Cindy Holby (6 page)

“What’s to handle?” Jake replied. “The bullet passed through, live or die, now it’s up to God, not Leah.”

“She’ll do what she can for him.”

Jake shrugged. “That’s all anyone can ask of her.” His voice was tight and his words clipped. Yep, she’d shot him down. Ward opened his mouth to speak.

“Don’t,” Jake said. “Just don’t.” He jerked on his gloves. “I’m going home.”

“In this mess?”

“I’ve got a ranch to run.”

“Yeah, good luck with that when you’re frozen and the wolves are chewing on your bones.”

“Not all of us have saloons to hide in Ward.” Jake stomped out not bothering to close the door behind him. The wind caught it once more and kicked it back against the wall. Ward put the lid back on the whiskey bottle and shivered as he pushed the door shut. It was a bad night out, but Jake was a grown man. He’d make it home, just out of pure stubbornness. Ward went back to the bar and opened a locked cabinet beneath the till. He took a cigar from a wooden box, clipped its end and lit it. He looked around the empty saloon, at the polished bar, the mirror that hung behind the tables scattered about and the staircase that led to the rooms. Satisfied that everything was as it should be, he went to the battered piano and sat down to play.

He couldn’t fight her alone. She was too much for him, just as she’d been too much for him when he was younger. Cade tried to push Letty away but she wouldn’t go. She clung to him like a tick. She crawled on top of him, pulled at his shirt, and clawed his chest. He was hot, slick with sweat and she used it to move her body against him like a snake slithering through a puddle. If Jasper came in and found her on him he’d kill them both for sure and then tell his friend to make sure Brody died. Why wouldn’t she leave him alone?

“I know what you want.” She took his earlobe in her mouth and bit down.

“I don’t…stop…please…” The things he felt, it couldn’t be right. The way his body reacted. It had to be
wrong. Cade saw it happening. He was outside himself, watching his sixteen-year-old self from above, yet he still felt the evilness of her touch. His skin crawled. If only he could make her stop. He had to get away. He had to get away from Letty, yet he felt paralyzed, helpless, and trapped.

No more. Never again. He wasn’t a boy now. He was a man. Wasn’t he? How could he be both?

Hell…I’m in hell…
It had to be. He was dead and in hell. He heard the screams of the condemned howling around him. He was burning up and his punishment was to watch his sins, each one as he committed it, over and over again. There was one comfort at least. If he was in hell then Letty and Jasper were too.

She’s here…she’s here…God. Please. No.
He had to get away from her. He had to. He couldn’t live it again. He’d fight her. Like he should have fought her before but he was too damn scared at the time. Scared for himself, and scared for Brody.

Cade pushed at her with arms that had no strength. He willed his legs, legs that felt as if they were no longer connected to his body, to move. He felt himself, in two different places, one on the bed beneath Letty and the other floating on the ceiling, watching. Surely the two Cades could fight her together. Surely the two of them could move as one.

Letty laughed. She kissed his neck, then moved her mouth down his chest, licking and nipping his skin. The bed held him prisoner. The blankets twisted around his legs, holding him like chains. His gut twisted in pain and his chest ached with the effort. He had to get away. He must.
I must!

Leah’s chair tipped, startling her from her troubled sleep. She blinked and jerked quickly to attention. “Banks?” She was in his room, next to his bed. The lamp was turned down
low and showed the empty sheets torn loose and rumpled as if a wrestling match had occurred. Awareness hit her like the cold wind that howled outside. Not Banks. Banks was safe and asleep in her bed with Dodger by his side.
Pastor Key.

“No.”

Leah stood and turned up the lamp. The glow lit the upper part of the tiny room, casting a circle of warmth to fight the cold darkness that seemed to creep through the walls with the blizzard that still screamed outside. Her patient stood in the corner, next to the window, on the opposite side of the bed. He trembled, with his arms crossed before his face, his palms facing outward, his head bent, as if he were waiting for a heavy blow to strike him down.

Leah took a cautious step toward him. “Pastor Key?”

“No. I won’t let you.” He turned to her, his eyes dark, unfocused, seeing something within. Something terribly frightening by the look on his face. “No more. Never again.”

“You’re safe,” Leah said.
I should have let Jake stay…I can’t handle this…
She took a step around the bed. “Oh my goodness.”

He was naked. His flanks, starkly white against the planked walls took her by surprise. It shouldn’t have been a shock; after all she knew he was naked before, when he was under the blankets. It was just that male part of him, that very male part of him, was where her attention was drawn.

“God forgive me,” Leah said. Heat flooded her face and she put her hands up to cover her cheeks. It was not as if he knew, he was out of his head with fever. If he made it…
God please let him make it…
she’d never be able to look him in the eye. She’d seen Pris make the sign of the cross on her forehead, chest and shoulders when she did something that she knew was a sin. Leah would have done the
same now, if she hadn’t been so scared she’d do it wrong and offend the Lord even more.

She swallowed hard. “Pastor Key?”

He jammed his palms to his eyes. “No. Not him. No.” He dropped his hands and turned to her. His eyes were brown, as she’d expected. But more than brown, they were sad, as if there was no hope left in the world. “He’s not here.” So very sad. He gazed at her, unseeing and a tear trickled down his cheek. “Please don’t let him be here.”

Leah took the last few steps and caught him as he started to slide down the wall. “You need to lie down. It’s all right. You’re safe. Everything will be fine.” She didn’t really know what she said; she just knew she needed to soothe him to get him back into bed. She grabbed his arms. He was so solid and much taller than she was, but she was strong from hard work and she managed to get a grip and sling his arm over her shoulder.

He fought to stay upright and she placed her arm around his waist to steady him. He was bleeding again. She was a horrible nurse. Horrible. It would be a miracle if he survived.

“Let’s get you back to bed,” she said. They staggered forward the few steps until she was able to drop him none too gently on the bed. Leah straightened the sheets and blankets and tried her best to keep her eyes averted until she was able to cover him. She checked his wound by pulling the wrapping back. All she could do was place more padding against it and hope it would be enough to curtail the bleeding. She wrung out the cloth again and turned to place it on his forehead. He was looking at her with his very brown, very sad eyes.

“Who are you?” His voice cracked on the words.

“I’m Leah.”

“What did you do?” He closed his eyes once more.
“Angels can’t be in hell.” He gasped and his head dropped to the side with an exhalation.

Oh my God. He’s dead. Please God, don’t let him be dead
. Leah leaned in closer. She bent her head, her ear close to his mouth, and near his chest. Was he breathing? “Pastor Key?”

He sighed deeply and then spoke again. “No.”

Why was she here? The angel. The angel who found him in the cold. But if she was an angel, why did she take him to hell? Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was just more of the punishment. But maybe, just maybe she could get a message to Timothy. She could tell him he was sorry. She was close by. He couldn’t see her, but he knew she was there.

“Tell him I’m sorry,” Cade said. Was it possible that she could reach him? Tell him?

“It’s hell…anything is possible.”
Jasper leaned over him and laughed.

“You might have gotten me but you didn’t get my brother.”

“Yes I did
.” Jasper stepped back and swung his arm out, just like he used to during his cons with the medicine show. The insidious smile was definitely the same, so what came next would be evil. It always was in the past. What was he up to?

Cade saw himself as a boy, much younger this time. He was with Brody and his father stood behind the two of them. His father smiled, the same generous smile he’d give before he began one of his sermons. He placed his hands upon their heads, one on Cade’s, one on Brody’s. He ruffled their hair. Then he knelt down between them, slid his hands down their backs and shoved them. Cade felt his body stumble forward. He spread his arms out to catch himself but Jasper caught
him instead and another man came in and snatched up Brody and ran with him.

“Poppa! No! Please Poppa come back for us.” Cade watched as his father shook his head, turned and walked away. He left them. Even though Cade knew it happened many years ago, he felt the terror and loneliness all over again.

Because he was in hell.

“W
hat do you see in your dreams that are so horrible?” Leah stood over her patient’s bed, jammed her fists in the small of her back and stretched. She’d kept up her vigil in the chair all night, terrified to sleep lest Pastor Key leap from the bed again and do more damage to his wound, or worse, scare Banks with his worrisome fretting. “What could a minister do that was so horrible that he has nightmares?”

Her patient tossed his head in response, his words lost in a quick mumble. Heat still radiated from his body. How long could a body survive such a fever? The water in the bowl was tepid and the cloth stale. Fortunately there was plenty of snow available.

Leah was stiff for the first few steps into the hall. Dodger greeted her with a yawn and a stretch as he jumped from her bed.

“Don’t get used to it,” Leah reminded him. As if she could stop him. Dodger slept at the foot of Banks’s bed every night. She looked longingly at the bed, and at Banks curled beneath the quilts. If only she could crawl beneath their warmth and sleep for a week. But she couldn’t. There was too much that needed doing. Dodger padded down the hall to the back door and even though the fire needed stoking, Leah agreed that the call of nature should come first.

The door was frozen shut. It took quite a bit of determination and stubbornness on Leah’s part to finally wrench it open. Dodger tried to help by scratching at the doorjamb. A wall of snow, as high as Leah’s waist, greeted them. Luckily it was frozen so hard that it remained in place. Leah looked mournfully at the outhouse that stood some thirty paces away next to the shed. The rising sun was hidden behind a heavy cover of clouds. The snow and wind were gone, leaving behind a quiet emptiness and a strange foreboding.

“It’s going to be a long, long day.”

Dodger whined and touched the wall of snow with his paw.

“Tell me about it.” Leah picked the dog up and with a grunt, sat him on top of the snow. “I think Banks has finally passed you on weight,” she said as she once more stretched her back. Dodger’s paws scrambled for purchase as he slid about a foot down the drift but the snow held him and he made his way on skittering feet past the porch posts and out toward the shed.

Leah went to the kitchen for the pail and grabbed her coat from the peg. She should have brought in the washtub before the snow fell, but she’d forgotten with all the other preparations she made, and now it was buried under a three-foot, frozen blanket. It would have made for less work in melting the snow for water.

Leah checked on Banks, who had not moved and on her patient, who had rolled over on his side with his back toward the door. She studied the long length of his spine for a moment. The width of his shoulders. The definition of the muscles that showed beneath his tanned skin.
How is it a man who’s traveled all the way from Ohio in autumn can spend so much time in the sun?
Maybe it was a good sign that he’d rolled over. Maybe he would rest easier now and find some escape from his fevered nightmares.

Leah briefly debated going outside at all. She knew she could take the easy way out and use the chamber pot but she figured the exercise and the frigid air would do her a world of good and would wake her up enough to deal with the tasks that awaited her. Leah put on her gloves and chiseled some steps in the snow with her hands, throwing the excess snow in the bucket. Using her makeshift staircase, she climbed to the top of the snowdrift. Dodger, done with his business, ran back and greeted her as she slid down the opposite side.

Leah grinned as she rose to her feet and looked back at the way she’d come. Getting back in might not be so easy. A shovel stood against the porch rail and she wrenched it free. Walking to the outhouse was a balancing act and she was thrilled that she made it without falling. Even more so when she was able to free the door after a few sharp jabs with the shovel.

She came out to find Dodger rushing around on top of the snow, searching for familiar scents, wagging his tail when he found a new one. Leah closed her eyes, turned a slow circle and breathed in the crisp, cold air. “We made it through the night Lord, and for that I am grateful. Please give me the strength and wisdom I need to make it through this coming day.” She opened her eyes and stared up at the thick gray clouds. They weren’t done with Angel’s End.
Nature was taking a rest, gathering its strength for the next onslaught. Just as she was. But first she needed to check on her chickens.