September Rain (3 page)

She smiled. “Doctor Ketchum’s prescription for hot tea and whiskey helped me sleep. I’d like to speak to Mr. Chandler, to thank him.”

“He’s not here. He left last night, soon as I told him he was free to go. I tried to get him to rest here for the night, but he wouldn’t. It was a painful sight, to watch him move.” The sheriff shook his head.

Hallie stared at him. “The doctor saw him, didn’t he? He promised me he’d come straight here after he took me home.”

“He did, but Crazy Jake had already gone.”

“Oh, no,” Hallie moaned. “How could you let him leave without seeing the doctor?”

“Miss Hallie, I tried to talk to the man, but he just stared right through me. Acted like he didn’t even hear me.”

Hallie rushed out of the jailhouse and over to the doctor’s office. She banged on his door. “Doctor Ketchum! Doctor!”

He opened the door and squinted at Hallie as he settled his spectacles onto his nose. “Miss Hallie, are you all right? Come in.”

“I’m fine. It’s Jacob Chandler I’m worried about. You didn’t see to his injuries last night?”

“He was gone by the time I got to the jail house.”

Hallie frowned. “You must go after him. You have to make sure he’s all right.”

“Now Miss Hallie. Crazy Jake obviously don’t want to be treated, or he would’ve come to see me. You can’t force somebody to accept help. Trust me. I’ve learned this over the years.”

“But he could be bleeding. He was badly hurt by Myers’ men.”

The doctor nodded, and gave Hallie an assessing look. “If you ask me, Jacob Chandler is hurting from more than just a beating.”

Hallie’s heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean?”

The doctor took off his spectacles and polished them on his shirttail. “I don’t think he’s ever gotten over his wife being killed and him unable to help her. I tried to talk to him while he was recovering from having his throat slit, but --”

“Having his throat slit?” Hallie felt her face drain of blood.

“Yep. Have you never heard his story?”

Hallie shook her head. “I heard he was injured when his wife was killed, but I didn’t know exactly how.”

“Outlaws raided his place, looking for horses to steal. They killed his wife, who was with child, and they slit Chandler’s throat, but he lived.”

Hallie grasped the door facing as the doctor’s words built an image in her mind. Her heart ached for the man whose smile had brightened her day and whose unselfish bravery had saved her life. “And now he’s hurt because of me. Oh, I have to help him.”

“Like I was saying, Miss Greer, I don’t believe he wants help. And nobody can make a man accept help if he don’t want it.” The doctor smiled at her. “Not even you.”

Hallie lifted her chin. “I am responsible for what happened to him. I owe him, Doctor. I owe him a lot, possibly my life. I cannot just sit by while he may be in great pain, or even dying.”

“Well good luck, Miss Greer. Three years ago nobody could get through to him. People quit trying. Then when he returned only to seclude himself up in the mountains, people decided he was crazy.”

Hallie searched the doctor’s face. “Is he?” Her heart pounded, as if the doctor’s answer were of utmost importance to her. Maybe it was.

He reseated his glasses on his nose and gave Hallie an assessing look. “That’s hard to say. Back then I’d have said no. He was just a man with a powerful grief, and a need for vengeance. But now? After all this time?” He shrugged.

Disappointed that he wouldn’t reveal any more, Hallie thanked him and turned away.

“Miss Greer? Where are you going? You want me to look at your neck again?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m just going to rest today,” she said lightly. “Thank you.”

Hallie rushed back toward her house, her thoughts in turmoil. Jacob had left last night. No one, not even the doctor, knew how badly he’d been hurt.

As she passed the livery, Hallie once again looked away, but something caught her eye. It was a pack mule, drooping under the weight of a huge pack and grazing tiredly near the mountain path behind the livery.

Her hand went to her mouth as she realized the import of what she saw. Even if he made it to his cabin, he’d left his pack mule with all his supplies for the winter behind. If the mule stayed here, someone would take it.

Hallie looked around, wondering who she could get to help her. Nobody cared about the man they all called Crazy Jake. Nobody but her. Rushing back to her house, praying she wouldn’t be seen, Hallie changed into riding clothes, then saddled her horse and headed back to where the mule grazed.

This time, she surveyed the site with an objective, assessing eye. She saw the evidence of her struggle in the dusty street. Fear clogged her throat as she remembered her ordeal. She swallowed hard. On the side of the road she found crushed grass and a rock with a dark smear on it. She dismounted and touched the dark smudge. A streak of brown stained her fingertips.

Blood. Probably Jacob Chandler’s blood. Shed for her.

Her heart pounded as she continued her study of the area. She was no tracker, but anyone could see the crushed grass and broken branches where something had pushed through the bushes.

She remounted and reached for the mule’s bridle. “Come on, Jenny,” Hallie said, calling the mule by the name her father had always given to all his mules. “I know you’re tired but I have a feeling Jacob Chandler needs us. Let’s go find him and see how he’s doing.” She clucked to her little mare and coaxed it forward, following the tracks which traced the little-used path up the mountain.

For more than three hours she urged the mare forward over the difficult terrain, unwilling to think about how long the trail was. Unwilling to consider how foolish it was to head up the mountain by herself this time of year when the days were growing shorter and the shadows held a foretaste of the coming winter’s chill. Unwilling to think of how alone she was, with nothing but her father’s ancient shotgun for a weapon. Unwilling to admit to herself that she had no idea where she was going or what she might find once she got there.

At one point beside the path, a large area of grass and twigs was crushed, as if someone had sat or lain on the trail. Hallie dismounted and bent down to look closely at the ground. She picked up a dried leaf and found a bloody fingerprint on its surface. Fear and dread weakening her limbs, she climbed back onto her horse.

He had fallen off his horse. A mixture of fear for his life and admiration for the strength of will it must have taken him to remount the horse coursed through her.

At last, well past noon, as the sky began to darken with rain clouds, Hallie’s mare stepped out of the woods into a small clearing in front of a tiny, rough cabin.

A big gelding stood there, saddled and restless. She tied the mule and her horse beside it. Was this Jacob’s place?

Muttering a quiet apology to the three animals and promising to take care of them as soon as she could, she knocked on the door of the cabin.

“Mr. Chandler?” she called. Her voice was still hoarse, and it was hard to speak past the racing of her heart. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Mr. Chandler? Jacob?”

She pushed on the door. When it opened, she stood stock still for a moment, listening, expecting something to happen, not knowing what.

Her heart pounded like thunder in her temples. What if he’d made it home only to die? A fierce apprehension tempered with regret suffused her. She stepped into the cool darkness of the cabin and closed the door behind her. Slowly, the darkness around her coalesced into recognizable silhouettes.

The cabin was a single room, containing nothing but the essentials. A wooden table sat in its center with one rough-hewn chair, a fireplace lined one wall, and on the other wall, below a blanket-draped window, was a bed. The loneliness of the single chair reached out to her.

She noticed something on the bed. Someone.

She froze. “Mr. Chandler? Jacob?”

He was curled up on his side, still as death. Hallie blinked and stepped closer, trying to see in the semi-darkness.

Suddenly a picture of what she was doing flashed before her vision. She was standing in a cabin, alone and defenseless, looking for a man she did not even know. She drew in courage with a deep breath.

The ladies of Goshen Springs would be horrified, but then they were horrified at her often enough for not marrying, for running a store alone, for speaking her mind. They would be quick to say she had invited her attack by walking alone at dusk. And they would not understand her need to ride up here alone to check on the man who had saved her life.

Hallie shrugged. She was too old to worry about what people said. And at twenty-nine, she was in very little danger of hurting her reputation.

She watched the shadowy figure on the bed, but it didn’t move.

“Jacob?” If he was dead, she would kill Brent Myers with her bare hands.

Creeping carefully and quietly across the rough floor, she finally stood no more than two feet from the simple frame bed. A blanket covered the bed and the man lay on top of the blanket, clad only in buckskin breeches.

He was whipcord slender, and with his bare shoulders and bare feet he could have been a boy taking a nap. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she had to revise her first impression. This was no boy. It was Jacob Chandler. His leanness was deceptive. Long muscles defined his shoulders and arms. His legs looked powerful and sleek beneath the buckskin.

Then she saw the gun clutched in his hand. Her sore heart ached anew. He was battered, beaten, but he still strove to protect himself. Hallie stared at him. Her first thought was his skin looked like fine tanned leather in the shadows. Her second was he certainly didn’t have on many clothes.

Standing perfectly still, hardly breathing herself, she stared at his bare chest until she saw its faint rise and fall.

“Thank God!” she muttered. He was alive.

Jacob Chandler jerked and stiffened, then lay still again.

“Oh Mr. Chandler. I’m so glad--” Hallie stopped. “Mr. Chandler? Jacob?” She peered closely at him, then reached out and pushed long strands of brown hair out of his face. “Why, you’re burning up.”

She looked around. “I can’t see anything in here.” She pulled down the blanket that was draped over the single window and squinted in the sudden brightness. “That’s better,” she said, turning back to the bed.

The sight that greeted her almost buckled her knees. In the shadows she hadn’t seen how badly beaten he was. “Oh, look what they did to you.”

His nose and mouth were crusted with blood. One eye was swollen, and ugly purple splotches marred his shoulders and what she could see of his chest and belly. There was blood matted in his hair.

“How could they?” She gingerly felt his forehead. “You have a fever. I’ve got to get some water into you. You must not have drunk any since yesterday.” She put her hands on her hips and looked around. “But I’ll have to wake you up enough to drink. And where is your water, anyway?”

Then her wandering gaze fell upon a bucket sitting on a bench with a dipper in it.

“Now, I just need some cloths and a bowl.” A wooden bowl sat on the table, but the only cloth she found was stiff with dirt. She used his butcher knife to cut her underskirt for a cloth. “You will pay me back for this,” she said to the unconscious man, gesturing with the knife. “It was brand new.”

She picked up a tin cup and, sitting carefully on the edge of the narrow bed, she dipped the fine cotton material into the water and touched it to his mouth.

His head jerked. He gasped and opened his eyes. His fingers tightened convulsively around his gun, but his eyes didn’t quite focus on her face. Hallie smiled at him tentatively. “Are you thirsty, Mr. Chandler?”

Jacob Chandler’s first thought was he hurt more than he ever had in his life. His second thought was his first thought underestimated the amount of pain. The effort required to clutch at his gun started muscles cramping throughout his body. He lay still, breathing shallowly through his teeth, hoping to stop the convulsive tightening of his bruised and battered muscles. It didn’t work.

“Mr. Chandler,” A soft, hoarse voice penetrated the haze of pain. At the same time a gentle hand touched his. The hand trembled. The only reason Jacob noticed was because his hand was about the only place on his body that wasn’t knotted in pain.

“It’s me,” the voice continued. “The lady you saved yesterday? It’s just me. I’m Hallie Greer.”

Jacob remembered, and remembering knotted his muscles even more. He pushed air out between his teeth, trying his best not to move until the agony lessened. He recalled making it back to his cabin sometime around dawn after a hellish night during which the best he could manage was to stay on his horse. One time he’d passed out and fallen off. Hell was probably a Sunday picnic compared to the agony he’d endured climbing back up onto the horse.

Concentrate, he thought. Concentrate on Hallie Greer’s voice, on the soft touch of her hand, on anything but the pain.

He tried to focus on her face, on her kind brown eyes, her delicate features, the cloud of chestnut hair, but another cramp gripped him like huge hands twisting his limbs into knots. He frowned and put all his energy into bearing the pain. His eyes drifted shut.

“I know we haven’t been formally introduced--” she said softly.

Jacob struggled to concentrate on her voice.

“--but since you saved me from a horrible fate, and I’m seeing you in your bed, I suppose you could call me Hallie. That is, if I may call you Jacob?”

He knew who she was. Knew her melodious voice, from the few times he’d been in her store, although her soothing tone and matter of fact words surprised him, as did her presence here in his cabin. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined Hallie Greer in his cabin.

He’d always thought she was attractive, plus she was one of the few people in town who ever spoke to him. She’d never failed to smile and speak, as if he were just another customer. She’d always made him feel welcome in a town that had long since dismissed him as crazy. That was fine with him, of course. He didn’t talk to anyone, and didn’t want anyone talking to him.