Now and Forever (4 page)

It might’ve been called growling, but Tucker just nodded around the low sound he was making as Shannon eased the sock off his poor foot. An ugly-looking bruise showed right above where his ankle joined to the foot.

“It’s got to be broken, but it looks straight. I’d say it’s a simple fracture. If I can splint it, and you can keep your weight off it for a while, it’ll heal all right.” Saying it out loud helped her somehow.

“How am I supposed to keep my weight off it when I need to hike out of this cave and walk across a mountain all the way back to Aspen Ridge?”

A good question.

“One thing at a time,” she replied. “That log over there, the one jammed into the cave opening, has some branches on it. I’ll see about using them to splint your leg. The tricky part will be getting to the branches without falling back in the river. Once your leg’s rigid, that should lessen the pain. And once I’m done with that, I can go explore. No sense worrying about hiking until we find out if there’s a trail to hike on. We may find ourselves back in that awful river before the day is out.”

Shannon stood and found herself yanked right back to her knees. Tucker had a firm grip on her wrist and a grim expression on his face.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Shannon, we can’t go back in the water.”

“We may have to.”

His grip wasn’t as tight, but he didn’t let go. Instead, he seemed to caress her arm, ran his thumb over her pulse. “The tail end of this river is the nastiest stretch of water known to mankind. I’ve never heard of a man coming through it alive.”

“N-never?” She swallowed hard. Tucker had lived out here all his life and knew this land as well as anyone, except maybe Sunrise and the other Shoshone.

“Never. Mountain men talk and they like to boast. The ones who’ve died didn’t go in on purpose. They all fell in by accident.”

Or were thrown in by a blamed fool woman,
Shannon thought.

“If someone had made it, I’d have heard. And I’ve seen animals float through those rapids. They fell in somewhere upstream and then got killed coming through.”

Shannon glanced at the log, then cleared her throat. “Well, I guess we’re going to do some exploring then.”

Now she had a new worry—hanging on. She inched out on the log to reach for the nearest branches, terrified of falling into the river.

As if she didn’t have enough to worry about already!

I
f you were wearing a skirt like a proper woman, you could tear strips off your pretty, lacy petticoat to bind up my leg.”

“If I was wearing a skirt, I’d have drowned at the first falls.”

“That’s true.” Tucker hated handing over his pack, but it was that or his shirt or pants, and he wasn’t giving her either of them. But they really might miss that pack later.

“I’ve saved enough of the pack it can still carry things.” She gritted her teeth as she knotted the last strip of leather around the sticks she’d cut off the tree trunk.

“You’ve really trained with a doctor, haven’t you?”

“Yep.”

Tucker studied his injured leg. “You did a good job. Thank you. Now let’s see about hiking out of here.” Tucker had to keep talking or he’d faint from the pain, although maybe fainting would have been better. He wouldn’t have minded sleeping through having his broken leg bound
up. He wasn’t sure how he was going to climb around inside the cave and find a way out. But he’d figure a way somehow. He hadn’t survived in the mountains all his life by being a man who gave up easy.

“You just stay put,” Shannon said. “I’m going to scout around a little.”

“You sure as certain are not.”

“I’m not going far, Tucker. I’m not even going far enough to leave your sight. The back of this cave looks like a tunnel that stretches into the mountain. If it does, I’ll come back and we’ll figure a way for you to come at least to the mouth of that tunnel. We are not getting separated. But there’s no sense you hopping along in one direction, then back in another. Let me find out which way we’re going first.”

Shannon smiled, stood, and was jerked right back down on her knees. She frowned. “What now?”

“Help me get turned around.” Tucker’s hand clamped like a vise on her wrist. “I want to be able to see you every second. A cave like this can be a mighty dangerous place. We should be tied together, but my whip’s not long enough.” Tucker got a little dizzy thinking of all that could happen in a cave. He’d climbed around in plenty of them and seen some real strange sights.

Shannon nodded. “Whatever will put your mind at ease.” Her tone of voice was one that might be used with a child. She was humoring him. Well, good, so long as she did as she was told.

“Let me help. I’ll lift your legs while you turn.”

He really hadn’t ever been around a woman. Only Sunrise and her daughters, and they were all older. They’d
tormented him like big sisters, so it’d been easy to think of them as such. He’d made a rule about women: never marry one.

He’d seen Sunrise raise a crowd of young’uns mostly alone. Tucker liked her husband, Pierre Gaston, admired him and ran around with Pierre and Tucker’s own pa, though Pa had died before Tucker became a grown man. He liked the life these tough old mountain men lived and wanted it for himself.

But that didn’t change the fact that Pierre left Sunrise behind to a hard, lonely life. She’d fed and clothed and even birthed all her young’uns almost completely alone. Pierre had spent most of the winter with her, which usually ended up bringing another child. Then he headed for the high-up hills come spring, summer, and fall. And there she’d be with a growing family, a baby on the way, and whatever work she had to do to keep things going.

Tucker had loved Sunrise, and quiet as she was, he’d known it hurt her to be left over and over again. Mostly he’d known it because it had hurt him to be left by his pa, and it’d hurt worse because, kind as Sunrise was, Tucker didn’t really belong to the Gaston family.

Not only was a woman hurt by a mountain man’s life, his children were, too.

Sunrise’s sons grew up and took to the mountains and trapping like their pa, and they’d taken wives and left them mostly alone to raise lonely kids. Sunrise’s daughters had lives mostly the same with their trapper husbands, who left them behind.

Tucker didn’t want that life for a woman and children
he cared about. And he wanted the mountain life he’d been born to. So he’d decided to steer clear of women altogether.

And then when he’d gone over a cliff with Shannon Wilde, that’d settled the whole thing as far as he was concerned. He had a feeling things weren’t settled at all for Shannon. And a man needed to be able to stand up if he had a woman who needed chasing. So he was going to just put the whole notion of Shannon aside until his leg was better.

But she needed to keep her hands off him for him to abide by his own decision. And her hands were all over him right now.

Carefully she slid her arms under his legs and lifted. Doing his best to let the pain keep his mind off other things, Tucker pivoted on his backside while Shannon guided him around and eased his feet back to the floor. She really was gentle with him.

She’d make a great mother to the children he’d no doubt leave her to mostly raise alone, poor sweet, pretty lady. He wasn’t looking forward to her finding out about that.

She smiled, and dimples popped out on both her cheeks. “Now you watch me every second. I will be careful and won’t go out of your sight, I promise.”

She spoke as though he were a small child, and not a very bright one.

He’d prove to her soon enough that he was a fully grown man, and when he was done with her she’d never forget it.

“Why do you think this cave is streaked with black?” she asked. “It’s not a normal sort of stone, is it?” Tucker watched as Shannon walked slowly across the uneven floor.

The cave was about ten feet high, rising to something of
a peak. It spread to about that same width. Just a narrow, lopsided triangle somehow carved into an endless wall of rock along the river. She was right—the cave was made up of black stone, as well as the usual gray.

“I wonder . . .” Tucker picked up a fist-sized rock near his hand, but only glanced at it, not wanting to take his eyes off Shannon for very long.

She stopped and looked back. “You wonder what?”

“I wonder if this is coal.”

“I suppose it could be. I know nothing about coal.”

“I know it burns. It can be used to heat a house.”

“Why bother when there’s so much wood around here to burn?”

Tucker nodded. “It’s useless, I reckon.” He tossed the lump aside. Shannon went back to her exploring. Suddenly her skirts disappeared.

“Shannon! Stop!”

Shannon spun around and was shocked to see the cave entrance gone . . . and Tucker, too. She started back in the direction she’d come and within five paces saw the thin triangle of light with Tucker sitting up in front of it, struggling to get his good foot under him, looking like he was trying to jump to his feet and run after her.

He saw her and dropped back with a groan of pain. She hurried over. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I’d wandered out of sight. There’s definitely a tunnel back there.” She frowned, worried he’d hurt his foot.

She had to bring him along. He’d hurt himself trying
to come, so she might as well cooperate. “If you lean on me and put your weight on your good foot, maybe you can walk with me. Or maybe—”

“Let’s try it.”

He wasn’t going to listen to her options, so why bother giving them to him? The man was determined not to let her go off exploring. And since she was a bit afraid to go, it was just as well.

“What’s the tunnel like?” he asked.

“Good, I think.”

“
Good
is a word that can mean a lot of things,” Tucker said.

“Well, I was standing upright with no trouble, and it’s wide enough for the two of us to walk side by side. I have no idea how long that will last.” The tunnel had an uneven floor, was dark away from the entrance, and she didn’t know where it led or if it would take them somewhere that might make it impossible to find their way back. Which would leave them to starve to death in the terrifying blackness.

Tucker glanced around. “We need light.”

“And how do we manage that?”

“If coal burns, there should be some way to fire up a chunk of it to give us some light.”

Shannon felt her heart rate increase. “If coal burns, is it possible we could start the whole inside of this cave on fire and burn ourselves to a cinder?”

Tucker stopped studying the walls and gave her a knowing look. “I hadn’t considered that. Thank you very much, Shannon. Now I can add that to my many worries.”

“Sorry. Bailey always said I had a lively imagination.”

“The trouble with underground tunnels is that they can split off. We could end up leaving this cave and never finding our way back to it.”

Shannon didn’t tell him she’d already thought of that.

“The river is very likely a deathtrap, but it’s also our only sure way out and our only source of water. We could disappear into this tunnel and be trapped underground until we die of starvation or thirst.”

Starvation, she’d thought of. Thirst, though . . . add that in. “You’ve got a lively imagination, too.” It made Shannon lonely for her sisters. “Tucker, you should probably just stop talking now. You’re not adding much to this except a list of worries. I wouldn’t have taken you for such a fretful man.”

“It’s a new side of myself, I’ll admit. I think if my leg wasn’t broken and I didn’t have you to take care of, I’d probably see it as an adventure, even a thrill. A man can’t live in the mountains all his life and not like taking a few risks.”

“Well, we’re going to have to take some risks if I’m ever going to get back to my sheep, so quit listing ways we could end up dead and let’s start down this tunnel and hope it leads somewhere.”

Tucker nodded. “I think I’ve figured out a way to give us light, and maybe keep us from dying of thirst.” He gave Shannon a weak smile. “At least for a while.”

“You really do go up into the mountains planning to live by your wits, don’t you?”

“I plan on it, and I do it.” Tucker felt mighty proud of himself for thinking of the coal for a light. Shannon had done all the work and she’d had a time of it getting the coal to catch fire.

When she’d been working on his leg, she’d broken branches off the tree and stripped off the twigs and bark, cutting the branches down to the right size for a splint. What was left over had dried and now was right here handy for the fire. Then, because Tucker had been weak from pain despite how careful she’d been, he’d lain still, and worthless, giving directions she probably didn’t need, to find the makings for fire in his pack. The matches, bits of shredded bark, and birds’ nests all wrapped tight in oilcloth.

He’d watched her get a wood fire going. Then she’d stoked it with coal. It’d been no easy thing getting that coal to catch, but finally it had, and Shannon scooped it into his tin cup slowly, careful not to smother it, then filled the cup with the smallest chunks she could find.

“I’m going to pack a little extra coal,” she said. The cup glowed with blue fire. “I’m hoping we can keep finding more as we walk. I don’t want to carry a single thing we don’t have to.”

She set the burning cup aside and knelt beside him. Running a hand over his forehead, he felt sweat soaking his face. It made his stomach churn, and he knew what came next. “Can you make it, Matt? We can rest a while longer if we need to.”

He liked that she said
we
, as if it wasn’t only him who was slowing them down.

“I once hiked for two weeks up and down a mountainside
in January to fetch food for Sunrise and her children. I walked through a blizzard, crossed a glacier, and brought down an elk. I butchered it, strapped the meat on my back, and fought off a pack of wolves to get home. I never once considered giving up. I don’t think a little thing like a broken leg is gonna stop me.”

Shannon smiled, but he didn’t see any dimples. He already knew the difference in her smiles. No dimples, no real joy. She was worried and facing unknown danger. And considering he was next to useless, he didn’t blame her for wishing she had a little more help.

“Let’s go,” he said. “I’ll need something to lean on, and you look like you’d make a good crutch.” Getting to lean on Shannon was the best part of this whole thing, though he regretted adding yet another burden to her.

She stood. “How do we get you up?”

“I’ll scoot over to that rock.” Tucker pointed to a rock about knee high. “I’ll boost myself up to sit on it, and then I should be able to get to my feet.”