Crossings (8 page)

Helena looked helplessly at Eliazer. “I don't know anything about tending gunshots.”

Leaning over Carrigan and gazing at the damage, he commented thoughtfully, “In the war, I saw such wounds. I don't know if the bullet is still inside him. If it is, he's as sure as dead.”

A tremor shook Helena's courage. Carrigan wasn't
going to die. He couldn't. He was too strong to let go of life.

“But if the bullet came out the other side,” Eliazer continued, ruffling his beard with stubby fingers, “he might have a chance. No way to tell until you turn him over.”

“I'll need to undress him. You're going to have to help me with his coat.” Her next move wavered between continuing to assess Carrigan's condition and warming him to stop his chills. Seeing his teeth rubbing together from cold, she knew the wet pants took precedence. But she couldn't slide them over his knee-high boots, so they had to go first.

The muddy heel was slippery, making removal difficult. Helena had to give it a reluctant pull that dislodged the knife. The sheathed blade fell out of his boot as Carrigan's low groan tormented her. She hated to cause him more pain and knew the worst was yet to come. Glancing at his face, she took some relief in the fact that his eyes were still closed.

After shedding both boots and his damp stockings, she wiped her dirty hands on her skirt. “Ignacia?”

“Miss Lena?”

“Heat some water and bring me a large basin.” Helena's voice lowered along with her gaze. “With plenty of towels. And while you're downstairs, tell Emilie to tear a worn-out bedsheet into strips.”

Light footfalls signaled the cook's departure.

Carrigan wore two belts—one threaded through the loops of his waistband, and one slung low on his hips. Helena carefully withdrew the weighty Walker Colt from its holster, keeping the end of the barrel trained on the floor as she walked to the bureau across from the bed and set the gun on top beside his knife. Returning to Carrigan, she unbuckled both belts, easing the length of the empty holster out from behind his hips. She bit her lip, her hand falling to his navel. He felt hot against her knuckles as they grazed his skin while she undid the placket of his pants. Dark
whorls of hair filled the widening wedge, evidence he wore no underdrawers. She wasn't going to be a prude about things. It wasn't as if she hadn't seen this part of the male anatomy before. And Carrigan was her husband—even if in name only. But she felt excessively aware of being observed by Eliazer while she came to the last few buttons that stretched over Carrigan's sex.

Brushing aside her modesty, Helena turned to the stock tender. “Come here and try and lift his hips a little while I pull off his pants.”

Eliazer nodded and they were able to remove Carrigan's pants as swiftly as possible. She tried not to look at what was cradled between his legs. Her eyes were drawn for several seconds before she arched her gaze to his face. He seemed so vulnerable lying there, unlike the virile man who'd sat by a campfire cooking his supper. She got a blanket from the trunk at the end of the bed. Draping the homespun over his middle, she tucked the ends around his legs.

“Now we have to do his coat,” she said, wishing there were a simple way.

Eliazer absently scratched his temple. “I'll roll him on his side, and you take out the arm nearest his wound so we don't have to make him lie on it.”

“All right.”

With a subtle rotation of Carrigan's upper body, Eliazer held him while Helena gently freed his arm. Carrigan swore incoherently, his jaw clenched and nostrils flared. For a moment he opened his eyes, and she froze. But he looked right through her. His green irises were all but obscured behind the black moons of his dilated pupils.

“I don't mean to hurt you,” she murmured apologetically, but he was unconscious again. While Eliazer still held Carrigan, she removed his shirt on that side as well. After that, taking his left arm out of his other coat and shirtsleeve was relatively easy.

Eliazer perused the wound, then shifted Carrigan
slightly so he could see his spinal area. “Ah, it's good. Come, Miss Lena. I'll show you.”

Helena drew up to Eliazer's side. A puddle of blood crept from the exit wound in Carrigan's back, and Helena pressed a hand to her throat.

“It looks like,” Eliazer commented attentively, “the hole sealed itself when the bullet exited. The cartridge entered him just below the nipple line. Had the bullet been larger and not ricocheted off his rib and gone down and out, there would be a lot more blood. Instead, it seems his vital organs have not been hit.” Eliazer ran his hand lightly across Carrigan's swollen flesh. “I think the damage was done only to his muscles.”

“What should I do? Sew him up?”

“No. Just put a poultice on the wound and wrap him with bandages.” Eliazer slipped the brim of his hat higher on his forehead and said in a solemn voice, “He is lucky to be alive. Whoever shot him intended to kill him by the angle of the entry. They were aiming for his heart.”

Helena hadn't had a spare thought to wonder who could have wanted Carrigan dead. But having two men connected to her be shot within the span of a week undid her nerves.

Ignacia returned with the water basin and towels slung over her arm. She put the items on the bureau. Helena gave Eliazer the muddy boots. “Take these to the kitchen, and I'll clean them later. There's mustard seed in the larder. Ignacia can show you where. Make up a plaster.”

Nodding, Eliazer went with his wife.

Alone with Carrigan, Helena began the process of bathing him. She dipped a cloth into the warm water, wrung it out, then ministered to his chest with a butterfly touch. Repeating the process until the basin turned pink, she was able to remove the gunpowder residue and control the flow of blood. His breathing remained somewhat ragged. Drops of moisture clung
to his damp forehead, and she wiped them away with the towel. Her fingers paused. An impulse to smooth the swath of hair from his brow took her, and she acted.

His hair was coarse, but felt silky. The length fell past his collarbone, making her wonder how he managed to cut the ends himself. They were even and nearly blunt, save for the shorter locks that teased his forehead. He kept them shoved away from his eyes, but she had noticed they came forward to aggravate him.

She gave his face a lingering look. The granitelike features softened in his sleep, though the troubling lines around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes had not diminished. Complexities surrounded him. She guessed his wounds went beyond superficial and doubted she would ever know the true extent of his pain.

With each soft, drying stroke of the towel, Helena's sympathy for Carrigan increased. She took his broad hand in hers, studying his fingers. They were lean, the pads tough. His fingernails were short and clean, the crescents of white on the ends cut straight. She found it difficult to connect the wedding ring on his fourth finger with her. But as their fingers meshed, the bands of gold were an identical set. To be taking care of her husband seemed surreal. Nothing had prepared her for the nurturing tendencies she was feeling now, and they frightened her. She gave his joints each a massage before placing his arm at his side.

Eliazer came up to her with a bowl of the plaster and sheet strips. He handed her a vial. “Rub some sassafras oil over his skin before you use the mustard. Bind him tight enough to stanch the blood, but not so tight as to chafe.”

Helena applied the hot poultice with Eliazer's help. They wrapped the bandages around Carrigan and changed the soiled quilt for a laundered coverlet, bringing the edge halfway up his chest.

“Leave the plaster on for ten minutes, then take it off and apply some of this salve.” Eliazer took out a tin from his pocket. “I make it with beeswax.”

“I'll need your help again.”

“I will help you.” He turned away and headed for the door. “I'm going to go down and tell Ignacia to steep some pine nut tea. That will medicate his insides. And I'll get the laudanum.”

She watched him go, then turned her focus back to Carrigan, who seemed to finally be resting comfortably. A flicker of hope fueled her stamina as she thought of the long night ahead. If only he didn't wake up in torment, she could cope.

Ten minutes later, she and Eliazer completed the process of dressing Carrigan's wounds. She thanked Eliazer for his help and told him to go to bed.

“You should eat, Miss Lena. You didn't have any supper.”

“I'm not hungry.”

He comforted her with his palm on her shoulder, gently squeezing. “I think he will live. Everything will be all right.”

Nodding mutely, Helena felt tears standing in her eyes. She wasn't an overly emotional woman and had no tolerance for those who couldn't hold their own in a crisis. But the stress of the day caught up with her. Fighting the urge to cry drained her energy, but she resisted. As soon as Eliazer left, she brought a chair in and positioned the legs close to the bed where she'd set a kerosene lamp on the floor rather than the stand. The wick was turned low and burned in a haze of tranquil light. Folding her arms across her middle, she settled into the hardwood chair that was to be her bed for the night.

At first, the slightest inconsistency in Carrigan's breathing made her alert. But after a while, she caught her chin dropping to her chest and had to snap it up. Widening her eyes, she shook off her fatigue.

Sometime around midnight, she couldn't fight her body's need for rest and dozed off.

Her empty slumber was short-lived. Without warning, her pulse leapt to life at the sound of Carrigan's voice. As she was pulled from her sleep, anxious trepidation zipped through her brain. Carrigan had bolted upright in the bed, his eyes flashing.

“Where's my Colt?” he hollered, clutching at the vacant spot on his hip. “I want my gun! That son of a bitch is out there, but I can't see him! Got to get off a shot before he shoots again!”

Alarmed, she braced her arms on his shoulders and tried to settle him back, but she was hardly a match for his strength—even diluted from his injury. “Please,” she said firmly. “You have to lie down. You'll hurt yourself.”

He caused a wild hubbub, demanding that big revolver of his. She had stored it in the bureau drawer after taking the bullets out, never thinking he would go crazy for it.

“Where the hell is my Walker?”

“You don't need it. No one is going to come after you here.”

His leg left the bed and it looked like he would try and stand. She barred his move by sitting on the mattress and leaning into him with all her weight. “You're in my house and you're safe. Do you know who I am?”

Miraculously, his struggles subsided, but he swore a world of oaths that nearly singed her sensibilities.

“Do you know who I am?” she repeated, and eased off him a bit so he could see her face.

He stared at her, his hair untidy, and replied in a scratchy voice, “Helena.”

“That's right. I'm not going to harm you. There's no one else in this room except me. No one's coming after you.” She wanted to reassure him with a consoling touch, but wasn't sure how he would react to her
comforting him while he was cognizant, so she refrained.

He blinked. “Helena?”

“Yes,” she whispered in a soothing tone.

“Did you save my life?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” he mumbled, then closed his eyes to exhaustion and was lost again.

For a long moment, she couldn't take her gaze off him. He may, or he may not, forget the incident, but she never would.

Why didn't he think himself worth saving?

*  *  *

Hell hadn't burned him to ashes, nor had someone come down from the Holy Road to get him. Fate had let him stay on earth. This, Carrigan realized as the blackness unfolded from his sight and a log ceiling came into his vision.

He hadn't felt what hit him, the lead plug deadening the muscles it had ripped. But he was hurting now. The tear in his side felt like a hundred sharp needles fighting to get inside the bullet hole at the same time.

There had been no warning, the ambush consisting of a single shot that had taken him down. Whoever had gunned him had hidden in the brush with a clear view of his activities, waiting for the perfect instant to shoot. Though Carrigan hadn't seen who fired, he had a hunch who the assailant was.

Jesus, his ribs hurt. He figured at least one had to be cracked, having had them busted before. The dregs of pine nut tea stuck to his tongue. Licking his dry lips, he tasted laudanum. The dosage he'd been given had softened his head to jelly. He'd slept with a hair trigger, his mind churning with unfinished dreams.

Lowering his gaze, he took in his surroundings. He was alone in an unfamiliar room. The walnut furniture with its marble-topped dresser and washstand looked too heavy for the delicate walls lined with
muslin—one even embellished with a floral paper. Etchings, an old-fashioned oval portrait, needlework pictures, and daguerreotypes hung on gold hooks. And from the unfiltered sunlight pouring in, he guessed there to be a real glass window.

He couldn't recall how he'd gotten here, but he remembered talking to Helena sometime during the night. She wouldn't give him his Colt. His fingers itched next to the vacant spot at his hip. He wasn't used to being without his gun. Even in bed. He flattened his palm into the mattress, feeling a plushness to it that came from feathers stuffed in the ticking. His own bed was filled with curly bison hair and had a firm shape this one didn't have.

Shifting his leg, he became aware he wasn't wearing any clothes and wondered if Helena had been the one to strip him raw. If she was the kind of woman who could view a naked man and not blush to her toes. Coyness didn't seem to be in her.

That he'd had to depend on her charity not twenty-four hours into their marriage rankled him. For three years he'd taken care of himself and had survived. He had never been too sick not to cure his ailment with herbs, or been too broken up not to set his bones. However, this time the man-made offense to his body was something he couldn't have fixed. He would have had to call on his fortitude and used the “Doctor”—a backwoods name he'd given to his gun since there wasn't a real doc around who could fix broken legs should he ever be thrown off his horse bad enough to bust both of them. Yesterday, if he'd engaged his Colt before being found, that remedy would have put his lights out for good.