Enchanted Heart (12 page)

“How do you suppose he died?” Daniel Bader asked, leaning over the skeleton to surmise what caused its demise. The young man, not quite old enough to realize the perils of adulthood, surveyed the scene with inquisitive inspection.

“Do you think it matters to him if we knew?” Caid asked with a touch of ire in his voice.

The boy shrugged and stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets. His mother, Mrs. Bader, pulled him away from the body, chattering her displeasure at his disrespectful manners.

Caid knelt over the body, what was left of it after buzzards and other scavengers had carried off most of the carcass. He removed the arrowhead that was barely visible in the russet dirt beneath a bleached rib bone. Hiding it within his fist, he rose to his feet and slipped it into his shirt pocket. No need to cause undue distress in the women who were already on the brink of fright, he thought. Although the remains of the body had been lying there for quite a while, Caid looked across the horizon, instinctively searching for the weapon’s owner and then he inspected the ground around the bones for the missing shaft. Judging from the arrowhead, which was made of scrap metal that had been pounded into shape and probably tied to an arrow made from Cimarron wood, it clearly belonged to a Lipan Apache warrior who had ripped the arrow from the body to attach it to another sharp and deadly metal tip.

“We have to bury him,” Marty said just above a whisper while she clutched Caid’s arm in her fists. Seeing the sparse collection of brittle bones reminded her of the many piles of skeletal remnants that dotted the trail from the coast of Texas to New Braunfels. She shivered at the notion that Papa’s bones would also be spread out across the prairie like this body’s bones and those of the others who had been left behind.

“He’s been laying here this long, why not leave him be?” A faceless male voice from the crowd interjected.

“No,” Greta emphatically agreed with her sister. “I wasn’t able to bury my husband. I would hope that someone came along later to give him a proper burial.”

Marty nodded, staring at the pile of stark white bones that lay at her feet while saying, “I would hope, too, that someone has buried our Papa.”

Greta mumbled in agreement, hiding her grief behind her fist and turning away from the heart-wrenching sight. At that moment, Seraphina returned with a blanket in her hands, curiously trying to see what lay beyond her aunt’s billowing skirt. But Greta took the blanket from her daughter and then sent her back to the wagon for a cup of water.

Seraphina stamped her foot, but after her mother shot her a cross expression, she shrugged and turned on her heel to do as she was told. She skipped back to the wagon but stepped up onto the spokes of the wheel in order to get a better look.

“Get down from there!” Greta ordered her daughter and, satisfied that the girl was climbing down and heading toward the back of the wagon and the water barrel, she turned back to the body that lay on the ground and covered the bones with the blanket. With a sigh, she said, “I’ll get a shovel.”

Caid waved his hand to silently tell her that he would get it before he strode to the nearest wagon to extract a shovel. He stopped by Marty’s wagon and gave the children a mission in the guise of searching for a lost coin, which he had flipped into a tuft of grass while they weren’t looking, so that they would be preoccupied while the adults buried the body. When he returned, Marty put her hand out to take it from him, but he shook his head and said, “I’ll do it.”

“Please, Caid,” Marty asked with fervent emotion. “Let me at least get it started. For Papa.”

Greta wiped a tear away and drew in a quick breath before she said, “And then I’ll take over, for my Gunnar.”

Caid conceded with a nod and gave the shovel to Marty, who placed it a few feet away from the stark skeleton and poked the blade into the ground. With her foot on the edge, she pushed with all her might in order to insert the shovel into the hard Texas clay. He tried to take over, but she waved him away with a determined expression. Deciding to let her continue her endeavor, Caid walked around with Daniel Bader in search of more remains of the body to bury. They returned with very little more to offer.

Blowing a lock of hair from her face, Marty hunched down and stomped on the blade of the shovel with both feet. Finally, the ground gave way, allowing the blade to slip a tiny bit into the soil. She bent over and lifted the shovel with its diminutive contents. With a grunt of exasperation, she turned her body and ceremoniously dumped the load into a tuft of grass. She silently watched the dust fly away in the wind as if it carried her sadness with it. Stepping backward and handing the shovel to her sister, Marty wiped the back of her hand over her perspiring brow and then let out a breath of relief.

Greta took the shovel and, after significant effort, she made Marty’s small hole slightly larger. With satisfaction on her face, she dumped her load on top of Marty’s minuscule mound. Then she handed the shovel to Caid who took it and smiled at Greta, who smiled in return. She reached toward him to squeeze his hand, silently thanking him for pleasing them. Afterwards, she hugged her sister. The two clung to each other, sobbing and declaring aloud that it was done, that their kin would be posthumously and symbolically buried.

When all of the bones that could be found were placed into the grave, which had been ceremoniously dug by every adult member of the party as a gesture of good will, they all gathered around the mound of dirt and clay with their heads bowed while Mr. Bader said a prayer.

When Marty raised her head again, Caid was next to her, pulling her into his arms with a warming embrace. She melted into his body, the tears spilling anew. Soon, her sister joined her while Caid wrapped an arm around each of the women with a smile of reassurance.

When they had cried themselves dry, they pulled away from Caid to find that everyone else had moved back to their respective wagons and were waiting patiently. Marty peered through her lashes at Caid and then smiled at Greta and said, using a phrase that she had heard Caid use, “We’d better get back on the trail.”

He enveloped her in his arm and then tucked Greta beneath his other arm while he walked them back to their wagon. While rubbing her sister’s shoulder with his large hand, Caid kissed the top of Marty’s head and whispered, “I’m sure he appreciates that we took the time to bury him.”

Marty nodded and wiped away the last tear of grief for her father, at least for that day. The act of interring the stranger’s body seemed to heal her heart and she knew that Greta felt that Gunnar’s body could possibly not still be lying alone in the Texas sun. Hopefully, for their sanity if not for brief relief from their grief, someone had performed the same noble deed for their abandoned loved ones.

When they reached it, Marty stopped and shook her head, saying, “I still want to walk. Greta you ride with Caid.”

Greta agreed with a nod and allowed Caid to help her aboard. She scrambled over the seat of the wagon and rummaged through her things. When she found the stack of papers, she carried them lovingly back with her. She waited on the seat while Caid walked around the oxen, pausing to touch a palm to Marty’s forearm while he whispered something into her ear and then he climbed into the seat.

“What do you have there, Greta?” Caid asked with a curious expression.

“Letters from my Gunnar,” she said proudly as she clutched them to her breast.

“Letters, hmm?” he asked while taking a peek at the scrawling handwriting on the page that she had opened and spread out on her skirt.

“And poetry. His poetry still moves me.”

“He was a poet?”

“Yes,” Greta replied with stars in her light blue eyes. “What a magnificent poet, he was!”

“It’s good that you have those to remember him by,” Caid mused before he clucked to oxen.

“I should know them by heart,” she said with a shrug. “But I still love to read them. I even hear the words in his voice inside my head.”

“You still love him,” he said, wondering if Marty still had such deep feelings for her dead husband.

“Yes,” Greta said pensively. Then she tilted her head and said as if to herself, “But time has a way of erasing certain memories.”

Caid looked at her then, delving into his mind for a suitable response but he found none. Instead, he pulled her beneath his arm and hugged her. Then, the heart-felt words tumbled from his mouth when he whispered, “You still have them. You will always have them.”

“I suppose I will,” she agreed, squeezing the stack in her lap. “Reading these helps.”

“Do you ever read them to Sera Dear?” Caid asked while he removed his arm from her slender shoulders.

Greta smiled. Then she cut her eyes at him as if to wordlessly chastise him for giving her daughter a nickname to which Seraphina would forever insist upon being referred. But her expression softened when she answered, “Some of them I do, especially the ones that were written when she was a baby.”

“I’m sure she appreciates it.”

Greta nodded, but she had already become engrossed in the words on the paper in her hands. Giving her privacy, he moved his eyes forward to search for Marty and he found her strolling just ahead of the wagon.

Marty walked with Seraphina, holding the girl’s small hand. And when she marched toward the grave, she paused only long enough to notice the crude wooden cross that one of the metaphorical mourners had fashioned for it. She had to smile with gratitude and her mood seemed to lift into high spirits again. She strolled with her niece while Seraphina swung their arms in merriment. Hours of blissful bonding passed while miles where stepped away.

But when Seraphina asked her the question that she was not ready to answer, she was speechless. At first, her niece started the conversation by reminding her that Mr. McAllister called her Sera Dear, to which Marty smiled and told her that it was a nice nickname.

“I think so,” she said before she asked without taking a breath, “Do you love Mr. McAllister?”

“I—I” she stammered, trying to find the right words to say to the seven-year-old that she would understand. “I like his company.”

“He loves you,” she said quickly and precisely, peeking up at her through shimmering blond curls.

“How do you know?” Marty asked, her heart beating wildly in her chest at the thought of that man, any man, loving her.

“He told me,” the girl answered with a shrug.

“He told you?” Marty asked with an exasperated and perplexed expression on her shocked face.

“M-hmm,” she said, skipping ahead of Marty as if enticing her to run after her for an explanation.

“When did he tell you that?” Marty questioned when she caught up to her niece and stopped her by grabbing her slim arm.

“When he pulled me out of the water,” she said before she wrenched her arm free and skipped away with a sheepish grin, for she was not stopping to answer any more questions.

Marty stopped in her tracks and thought. When he had pulled Seraphina out of the water was when he had also pulled her out of the water. Before that, they had only conversed a few times and those times were filled with tension and anger. How could he know even then that he loved her? How could she not know at that time that she loved him? Maybe she did love him, which caused the tension between them, she wondered while she took a step forward without watching where her feet fell.

Suddenly, she stumbled on a wagon rut and lost her balance. Her flailing body sprawled into the path of the team of oxen that walked forward without caring what they trampled over. She could see their large, heavy feet coming closer to her and she cringed, raising a hand against them as if that hand would ward off the crushing blow that would certainly break her bones, if not kill her. Her heart stopped beating and she drew in a breath in terror. A scream tried to escape from her frozen mouth, but all she could hear was the rattle of harnesses and the foreboding footfalls of the giant animals as they overtook her.

But just as the hooves stamped around her, she was dragged away by the same hands that had pulled her from the swirling river’s angry waves. She felt her arm scrape against the hard Texas ground but she didn’t care. A little pain was nothing compared to death, which she suddenly wanted to avoid. Her heart began to beat again when it was pressed against Caid’s strong chest and his arms enveloped her in an embrace that told her without words that he did, indeed, love her.

Caid held her to his body, not wanting to ever let her go. When he had seen her stumble, his heart fell and he’d jumped from the wagon to save her from the heavy hooves of the ox that inched toward her head. And after he had yanked her from impending death, he had wrenched her body toward him and into a death grip that he would have continued forever if he’d had a mind to. But he wanted to see her face, to kiss her lips, to hold her sweet cheeks in his hands. Searching her eyes, he asked her if she was hurt and feeling her shake her head beneath his fingers, he pulled her back into his embrace and groaned his relief.

Marty clung to him, her heart pounding into his skin, and she cried against his shoulder as he held and consoled her and kissed her head in elation that she was safe. Time passed them by and they were unaware of the wagon that also passed them, leaving them in a silent dialogue that reiterated their ardent emotions, which reverberated between their hearts and rejoiced within their rescued souls. He loved her! He loved her!

And she loved him!

Chapter Fourteen

As Caid had said, it took almost three more days to get to Fredericksburg. The terrain was beginning to become very hilly and the oxen and horses strained against the weight of the wagons that they had to pull up the small mountains. And then, they were almost overrun by those same wagons when they headed down into the valleys again.