Without Words (30 page)

“I set out in early April and haven’t made that much all year,” he said, still hardly believing it.

The sheriff cleared his throat. “Well as to that, my deputies and I did spend an entire day going out there and cleaning up the mess. We figure that should be worth, oh, say, twenty percent.”

The man looked slightly embarrassed but determined.

“If you’re the sheriff, you’re responsible for the whole county. They were in the county, weren’t they?”

The sheriff admitted as much with a nod.

“So going to get them was your job.”

“It’s not our job to clean up your camp, pack up, and bring everything back for you. Mrs. Sterling wouldn’t go back with us, you know. Drew us a map of sorts, but we’d never have found it if the horses hadn’t caught wind of us and started raising hell.”

Hassie stepped into the doorway. Bret waved the posters. “Did you know about this?”

She nodded.

“The sheriff thinks he and his deputies should have twenty percent.”

She held up both hands, all fingers extended, then signed.

“Ten, and you get their horses and gear,” Bret interpreted.

Dull red stained the sheriff’s cheeks. “Ten and the horses. That’s good. I’ll tell my men.”

He hunched over and left hurriedly as if he’d forgotten an important appointment. Hassie followed him out but returned quickly and sat carefully on the edge of the bed.

“That was a short shopping trip,” Bret said.

“Nothing to buy.”

“Go back again and buy some dresses and hats and things. There’s no use having all that newfound wealth if you don’t spend it.”

She smiled and spelled, “L-a-u-d-a-n-u-m?”

The desire to be free of the drug warred with the desire to be free of the pain. “You wouldn’t like to take off all your clothes and climb in here with me instead, would you?”

“Doctor says no.”

“You asked him that, did you?”

Her blush was much more attractive than the sheriff’s. Bret gritted his teeth against the rising pain and gave in. “All right, but let’s try half as much as you’ve been giving me.”

The half dose didn’t kill the pain, but it dimmed it enough he was able to sleep.

T
HE ONE PRESCRIPTION
from Dr. MacGregor Hassie simply refused to follow was that she should not sleep in the same bed as Bret. Kicking out in her sleep and so much as jostling the broken leg would be dangerous.

In spite of the fear the doctor’s dire warnings inspired, Hassie couldn’t bring herself to sleep in another room or even on a cot in the same room. She needed to be close enough to Bret to touch him, breathe his scent, and feel the rhythm of his breathing, so she slept on top of the covers wrapped in a blanket and rejected every other suggestion.

The first night Bret took only half a dose of laudanum, she woke in the middle of the night to the sound of his mumbling and feel of his jerky movements. His head rolled from side to side. She reached to touch him and hesitated. Was this a bad dream or pain from not taking enough medicine?

He thrashed, and the doctor’s frowning face rose in her mind. Shaking Bret’s good shoulder woke him all right. His hand clamped around her wrist so hard it hurt.

“Hassie? Hassie.” His grip loosened. His breathing slowed from gasps to merely rapid and finally to normal. He muttered something else too low to catch, then said distinctly, “Thanks, but the dog is better.”

She settled beside him again, not sure if he had really fallen back to sleep so quickly or if he was only pretending. Gunner was better? Tomorrow he was going to tell her what he meant by that.

In the morning she waited until after breakfast before broaching the subject, standing a good distance from the bed and signing slowly, spelling every word that might be in doubt. “Last night you said Gunner is better than I am. How is he better?”

“You must have misunderstood me.”

“I did not. You had a bad dream, and I woke you. You said Gunner is better. Very clear.”

He wriggled in the bed as if uncomfortable, and she didn’t hurry to fluff his pillow, rearrange the bedclothes, or ask what he needed.

“Since the war, I’ve had the same nightmare every so often.”

“How often?”

“Not too often any more, every couple of weeks or so.”

“A dog is in your dream?”

“No, no dogs, but Gunner has some sixth sense about it. Since you’ve been with me—except for the first time when I guess he was just getting his nightmare-chasing legs under him—he wakes me before it gets going. It’s like being free of the thing. That’s all I meant, he stops it sooner.”

“Last night was my first time. Maybe I am getting my nightmare-chasing legs under me.”

Bret smiled, which he hadn’t been doing much of since being confined to the bed. “Maybe you are. I’d rather wake up to your face than his. And your breath. Definitely your breath.”

“So you do not really like Gunner. You are good to him because he helps you.”

“It started out like that, but we’re friends now, and I’d be crazy not to appreciate him after what happened with Pock Face and his crew. I’d be even crazier not to appreciate you.”

Appreciation was nice. Hassie tried not to think how much nicer love would be. She fluffed his pillow, straightened the bedclothes, and sat in the chair by the bed. “What is the nightmare about?”

“The war. I’m in a battle just like it happened and then....” He swallowed hard, his voice falling. “We’re charging a stone wall the Rebs are behind. One raises up, and I shoot him. I see the ball hit, see him fall, and it’s my brother Albert. After that there are others. People who weren’t even in the war. Being free of that dream for months has been a gift.”

“I did not wake you in time?”

“You did. Not before it got going but before I shot anyone I know.”

“You did not kill your brother.”

“No, I didn’t. He didn’t even die from a rifle shot. He died of camp fever.”

“I waited last night because I was not sure it would be good to wake you. Next time I will be quicker. I will be as good as Gunner.”

“There are other ways you are much better than Gunner.”

His look started a hot flush she felt in the tips of her ears and other sensations lower down. She ignored them all. “No. Doctor says you must not even jostle your leg. Would you like a book to read? The doctor says you can have any of his books.”

Bret turned his head away and didn’t answer. Hassie went to see if she could help Mrs. MacGregor, wondering if the doctor had prescribed laudanum to keep the patient quiet in more ways than one.

A
FTER TWO WEEKS
of bedridden confinement, Bret’s face had healed, leaving only a thin reddish scar across his cheekbone that would be all but invisible before another year passed.

To his surprise, Hassie was a better barber than many he’d paid over the years. She had kept his beard from growing near the stitches with a feather-light touch even when the swelling and bruising were at their worst.

“I had to shave Cyrus for many months when he was so sick,” she explained.

“He could have done without and grown a beard.”

“He did not want that.”

Of course not. After Cyrus Petty had pickled himself to the point he couldn’t get out of bed, lying there with his head in his young wife’s lap while she shaved him was probably the highlight of each day.

Bret laid with his head in the same wife’s lap as she shaved
him
, and the pleasure of her touch, the scent of shaving soap and Hassie, the scrape of the razor, all added up to the highlight of
his
day.

Every touch, every glance, and watching her as she fussed over him also added up to a fever that never quite subsided. Long stretches of celibacy had always seemed just another one of life’s minor miseries, like sleeping on hard ground instead of a soft bed. A few weeks of marriage had transformed Hassie as wife from luxury to necessity.

And his damned leg was depriving him of her in every way, any way. One word he planned to ban from speech, sign, and spelling forever as soon as he got out of this bed was “jostle.” If he heard one more time how his leg was going to turn to dust, fall off, or explode if it experienced a single jostle, he was going to get up, run a race on the blasted thing, and cut it off himself.

Or maybe not. Now that two more slivers of bone had worked their way out, the bullet wound was finally healing. His shoulder already looked pretty good, although his arm had no strength, and he couldn’t raise it more than ninety degrees out from his side. Pushing to do more changed the chronic dull ache, to a fierce throb.

Bored, cranky, and in no mood for an examination or wound probing, Bret regarded Dr. MacGregor with disfavor when he walked in the room. The sight of crutches half-hidden behind the doctor’s back changed that.

“Hallelujah, hand those over.”

“Now, before you get excited and do something you’ll regret....”

“Don’t. Do not say the word that rhymes with hostile. I won’t put my foot down. I’ll treat the leg like fine crystal. Just let me out of here.”

“I do think if you’re careful, a chair in the parlor with the leg on a footstool would be safe. You can even have meals at the table, although it will be awkward with an elevated leg.”

Hassie hovered behind the doctor, looking about the way she had on the Leavenworth ferry, hand on stomach and all. Bret pushed up from the bed, positioned the crutches under his arms and rose on his good leg. Between the pain that shot through his right shoulder as it took part of his weight and the surprise as Hassie rushed forward, arms outstretched, he almost fell back down on the bed.

“What do you think you’re going to do?” he said, half-amused, half-irritated. “Catch me? I’d flatten you like a flapjack, and you wouldn’t even pad my fall much.”

The doctor cleared his throat. “Catching aside, do be careful.”

Bret nodded and took a single step toward the door. The crutches had been made for a smaller man or a woman, forcing him into an awkward hunch. Ignoring his shoulder’s complaints, Bret tapped off toward the door, his mood steadily improving.

In the parlor, he sank into a chair gratefully. No one need worry he’d want to travel long distances on crutches, at least not these crutches. Hassie had pillows under his leg almost before he got it on the footstool.

“Would you like a book? I could find a book.”

“Let me just sit a minute. Next time you go to town, though, see about some stationery. I’d better write home and tell them what happened. I’ll write Gabe too while I’m at it.”

Overhearing, Mrs. MacGregor came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. “You’re welcome to use my stationery if you don’t mind lavender, and I have a lap desk that will work perfectly for you there. I always end up at the kitchen table.”

Bret exchanged a knowing glance with Hassie at the mention of pale purple paper. “There’s no hurry,” he said. “And now that I’m up, we’ll move to the hotel in the next day or two and you can have a peaceful household.”

The doctor’s wife and Hassie both folded their hands at their waists and stared at him with matching unhappy faces.

“Oh, there’s no need for that,” Mrs. MacGregor said after a moment. “It’s nice having young people around the house, and you’re far from ready to manage in a hotel. Why you’d have to do stairs. How could you get up and down a flight of stairs? And you’d have to walk more than a block to the nearest restaurant, and it’s a wretched place. We have another spare room if we need it, you know.”

Bret had no illusions anyone enjoyed having him around these days. Hassie was the one Mrs. MacGregor didn’t want leaving. The doctor had been right when he said his wife had all but adopted Hassie, and the feeling ran both ways.

“You’re probably right,” he said, conceding temporary defeat on the subject. “A while longer then. We appreciate all you’ve done.”

“You’re going to get a walloping bill for it too,” Dr. MacGregor said, “and you’re going to entertain me at times like this when business is slow.” He pulled up a table and unfolded a red and black board. “If you can’t play chess, you can learn, and if you can’t play or learn, it will be checkers.”

MacGregor saw patients any day and any time they showed up, and he traveled countless miles around the countryside to those who couldn’t come to him. Bret wasn’t sure he’d bet on the doctor ever having time for a complete game of chess, at least not in one sitting. Still.

“Chess,” he said, “but I’ll warn you I’m not very good at it. A few games during the war is all.”

“That’s good enough for me.”

As the doctor set out the pieces, Bret wondered if Hassie could play, would play, or would like to learn. Or checkers. She’d probably stick the tip of her tongue out every time she debated over a move.

A slight tightening in the groin warned him to give up that line of thought before he embarrassed himself. He shifted in the chair and focused on the painted wooden pieces.

For the next several days, being up and about tired Bret enough during the day he slept through the night. After that his body adjusted, and he lay awake until the middle of the night, fighting the urge to toss and turn. He thought of the crippling, life-changing wounds men he’d fought beside suffered during the war with new insight. Surviving their wounds would have been only the beginning for most of them.

Those men lay awake on miserable cots, often under nothing but a tent. They also didn’t have the comfort or the temptation of wives sleeping beside them, all silk, satin, and velvet, although the nurses probably drove some of them half-crazy. Eight weeks MacGregor said. Five and a half to go.

Bret lay quiet in bed, waiting for Hassie to finish whatever last-minute chore she’d remembered in the kitchen and join him. He was a grown man, he could just grit his teeth and manage for a few more weeks.

The door clicked open. Hassie slipped through and closed it behind her. The pale blue robe she’d made with Mrs. MacGregor’s sewing machine was a pretty thing, but then anything would look good with her hair hanging loose like that down the back of it.