Crossings Page 5

  “Then where is your so-called husband?”

  “Gone to pack his things and get his horses.”

  “You really are going to let him live in our house,” came her shocked reply.

  “His place is with me.” She hung Daisy’s harness on an old horseshoe nailed into a post.

  Brooms, pitchforks, and shovels lined the outer stall wall. Helena reached into a bin and scooped some oats into the feed receptacle. While Daisy ate, she continued to groom her, using the water brush with its long, soft bristles to wash the feet and legs of the mare.

  When Emilie spoke again, her voice held a challenge. “What made him change his mind and marry you?”

  Pausing, Helena knew she couldn’t tell her sister about the land deal she’d made with Carrigan. Not just yet. Emilie wouldn’t see things her way. Right now there was nothing that could be done with the land anyway, but the revenue generated from the Pony Express would bring them relative comfort, as well as accumulating into enough funds to buy a new parcel at a later date.

  Helena hoped her tone sounded matter-of-fact when she replied, “He thought it would be advantageous to be married to a store owner.”

  “Advantageous to get all the free tobacco and liquor he wants,” Emilie quipped.

  Helena ignored that remark while putting a blanket over Daisy’s back.

  “Miss Lena?” Eliazer came into the stables. The stock tender was thickset, the complete opposite of his spindly wife. He wore a huge beard and mustache, an old slouch hat, a faded blue shirt, and no suspenders—though he could have used some as the waistband of his pants slid underneath his paunch. Pantaloons of coarse country weave with ample additions of buckskin sewn into the seat covered his stocky legs. The trousers were a dull yellow, and unspeakably homely. He kept them stuffed into the tops of high boots, the heels of which were armed with Spanish spurs. “Which horse do you want to take the western express run today? It’s time to saddle one.”

  “Maria Jane.”

  Eliazer nodded and went to the next to the last stall to prepare the bay mustang with a heavy black mane.

  “Is the afternoon rider Thomas McAllister?” Helena inquired, knowing full well James Whalen was the horseman, but wanting to sway Emilie off the subject of Carrigan.

  “No.” Emilie’s disappointment rang clear in her wistful tone. She had an all-absorbing infatuation for Thomas McAllister that made her face light up whenever he rode hell-bent for leather up Nixon Street. Helena thought her sister too impressionable to be taken by the rider. Not just because his job was dangerous and his life was on the line with each run he made, but because Emilie was too young to know what she was doing when it came to matters of the heart.

  “Ignacia could probably use some help with the store,” Helena mentioned as she began the same procedure on Lucy as she had done for Daisy.

  “I don’t have to like him,” Emilie said, paying no regard to Helena’s observation. “He’s a killer.”

  A lie was on the tip of Helena’s tongue, but she couldn’t deny the statement. It was true. Verified by Carrigan himself. His flat expression had affected her, for she had seldom seen a face possessing those characteristics. She’d registered a trace of sadness in his features, an underlying complexity that knew a reason and justification for his actions. That inkling of his far-reaching emotional regret had been what allowed her to go through with the marriage ceremony.

  “I’ll go help Ignacia, only because I want to,” Emilie said, then wrinkled her pert nose. “I don’t know how you can stand the smells in here. You’re just like Father. Sometimes I think he liked spending time with the horses better than he liked spending time with us.”

  A fond smile lifted Helena’s mouth. One of their father’s sweetest joys was seeing to the animals, something their mother could never understand.

  The stable grew quiet save for Eliazer’s efficient movements at the opposite end of the building. Helena glanced to where Emilie had been standing, but the spot was vacant.

  With a sigh Helena went back to work, wishing she and Emilie could be the kind of sisters they had been when they were wide-eyed children. Their daily lives had been a shared harmony of picking apples, husking corn, carrying water, and helping their mother cook. They’d gone to bees where they made quilts and strung dried berries. But when Helena turned fifteen, her mother said it was time to stop playing in the fields and quit going to school with Emilie. Helena had had to pull her hair back and start wearing a corset and hoops. No longer was she allowed to run through the meadow and laugh without a care in the world. She’d had to grow up and learn a thousand new things, but it had only taken one wrong turn and she’d fallen. She was scared Emilie would, too. Then nothing of the beribboned little girls from New Providence would exist anymore. And the innocence would all be gone.

  After the mail came in, Helena saw to the lathered horse. She spent the next couple of hours in the stables, cleaning stalls, raking the floor, and taking stock of the shelf that contained turpentine, castor oil, copperas, borax, and cream of tartar. Her father had taught her the medicinal benefits of each, as well as the applications.

  By the time she finished and ventured outside, the sun was getting low, sinking into clouds of crimson and gold. Its warm hues tinted the flag on the liberty pole in the yard a honey color. Darkness would descend shortly, and Carrigan hadn’t returned. She felt a flare of leeriness spread in her stomach. He’d had ample time to throw his clothes in a satchel and string his two horses. There could be no point to him reneging on his part of the bargain. She had what he wanted. But . . . She cast her eyes on the waning sun behind the mountain. She’d give him until five o’clock. If he didn’t show up by then, she’d go up there and find out what was taking him so long.

  In the meantime, she occupied herself with various chores. She fed the chickens they kept for laying and eating, brought out the crate of paper-wrapped garden seeds and sorted through which ones needed to be planted next, and checked on Esmeralda, the mare due to foal soon. Eliazer worked around her, replacing a rotten post in the corral. He only knew one song and was forever singing it—a ditty in Spanish she couldn’t follow. After a while, the melody drained her forbearance, and rather than holler at him to stop singing, she abandoned the yard for the corner of Main and Fifth Streets to see if she could spy Carrigan.

  Freight wagons jockeyed for the prime spaces, their oxen and horses sounding off at one another. Shop owners were readying to close their stores, and pedestrians scurried home. But in all the confusion, there wasn’t one man who stood out a head above the rest.

  Helena turned around and went back to the station, her brisk stride accenting her annoyance. By the time five o’clock struck, she was fairly hopping mad. She left the house with her cloak and set out on foot for Carrigan’s cabin. Her mind raced with the accusations she intended to sling at him for going back on his word.

  Feathery flakes of snow had begun to eddy down again, the sky taking on the gray color of an army blanket. The steep hillside had patches of white, but the boughs of wizened trees acted as canopies against the worst of the weather.

  As she approached the cabin, she expected to encounter the dog heralding her arrival by his snapping bark. But the lean-to and frontage were sinisterly quiet, and made no more noise than the falling sprinkles of snow. A glance at the stovepipe poking through the rooftop told her there was no fire inside.

  “Is anyone in the house?” Helena called out, wanting to alert Carrigan before he came out bearing down on her with his Colt.

  No reply came.

  Lifting herself up on her toes, she couldn’t see through the pane of yellow oilcloth stretched across a high-cut window. She stepped up to the door and looked at the woodpile to the right of it, and the traps stacked in a heap to the left. Nothing seemed amiss. Pine needles from the lodgepole above had fallen on the ramshackle stoop, but didn’t appear to be crushed by bootheels. She pounded loudly on the roughly planked door with her fist. Her knock went unanswered
, so she let herself in.

  The cabin’s dusky interior looked as serene as a summer morning, the furnishings orderly. Most everything inside was rudimentary, a hodgepodge of mismatched articles, from where, she couldn’t imagine. If Carrigan had been settled here before Genoa became a town, how had he managed to get a cast-iron potbellied stove, the wrought-iron bedstead, and even a big black coal scuttle?

  Neatness and organization monopolized the shelves, the items clearly marked. An old chuckwagon box sufficed as the kitchen cupboard and was filled with a large skillet, cooking utensils, and a chipped bowl. On top, there were canisters of gunpowder, tins of garden seeds, and a mold for making bullets.

  A bearskin covered one wall, while horns, a ram’s head, pegs holding various hemp and rawhide ropes, a saddlebag, concha-adorned chaps, and two rifles were mounted on another. Looking out of place, a roping saddle lay in the middle of the floor. There was a table and a four-legged chair with an oxbow back, but nothing else to sit on except an iron-banded camel trunk. A buffalo hide acted as a spread for the bed, the pillows cased in flour sacks. The red and blue mill brands added a splash of color to the rustic room.

  What surprised her was the profusion of books in a makeshift case made out of crates. Aside from many literary volumes written by Cooper, Audubon, and Hawthorne, there was an unabridged dictionary and several almanacs.

  The place may have been well stocked and tidy, but Helena found it lacking warmth. Perhaps because she knew the owner was reclusive, and she pictured his solitary figure at the lone table and chair with no one to talk to and only the words in books to speak to him.

  A gust slammed the door. Helena started and turned around. The fine hairs at her nape prickled, and she went to stand on the uneven porch. Snow came down harder, penetrating through the dense coverage of tree limbs in drifts. She brought her fingertips to her lips and thought of what to do next. Of where to look.

  The lamented baying of a dog seeped through the murky dusk. The eerie cry carried on the wind and sent a sickly feeling winding its way through Helena’s blood. She snatched up her hems and ran toward the howl. Branches snapped under her feet, and spindly twigs clawed at her cloak. A compound came into view. It was farther down from the cabin and leading away from town. She hadn’t noticed the corral and shed before, having never gone this far. A strawberry roan and stocky bay grazed on the short grass in the enclosure, but Carrigan was nowhere in sight.

  A spot of black moved, and Helena recognized Obsi. He sat on his hindquarters, his muzzle aimed heavenward, and let out a wail that tore her heart. Dread gripped Helena as she skidded to a stop, surprising the dog and making him bark and growl. But when he saw who she was, his lanky tail went between his legs, and he hung his head low. He dropped to all fours in front of a wide trough and put his chin on his paws. The long, stiff hairs above his eyes twitched as he followed her approach.

  She was more afraid of what she’d find on the other side of the trough than she was of Obsi. As the fearful images built in her mind, she began to shake. The closer she came, the more she could see. An impression of a prone man was cast in white by the sifting snow. She saw the legs, then the outline of a long coat and ample shoulders. She realized, with a shiver, it was Carrigan. He lay facedown, looking like a fallen statue and appearing to be just as cold as marble. She felt the color drain from her face, and wave after wave of shock hit her.

  Dear Lord, he looked dead.

  * * *

  Carrigan couldn’t move. A dreamless void spun its web about his senses, while the snowflakes wove a sheet over his conquered body. The report of a gunshot replayed inside his head, over and over. Its explosion was deafening, and the echo ringing in his ears seemed endless.

  Vague awareness came upon him by degrees, and the pain in his side made him feel like he’d been shoved in a pyre for burial. He shuddered, wanting to clutch at his ribs, but not having the strength to even crook his finger. He couldn’t see. Everything was dappled in white stabs of light amid a black canvas.

  The thought flitted through his brain that he was headed for the hereafter. No wonder he felt hot. The flames were licking at his heels.

  He had to get his fingers on the “Doctor” and do himself in. Death by a drawn-out decree wasn’t for him. The revolver was the only way out. Only he couldn’t move. He just couldn’t grasp the implement that could put him out of his misery.

  A woman’s voice broke into his realm of fire. So sweet and delicate and gentle, he ached. He knew who she was. . . .

  Helena.

  What was she doing here? A cruel joke sent from Lucifer? To give him the woman at his demise, and to make him want her even in his hour of death. She was talking to someone. The devil himself? If it was, Old Scratch had a Spanish accent.

  Sudden spasms of pain took him, and he groaned with anguish, filling up the night with elaborate profanity. Hands held his legs and shoulders, jostling him onto a hard plank of wood. Goddammit! He wasn’t dead yet and they were putting him in a stinking pine box! He raved like a maniac, threatening to shoot whoever was moving him but not having the capacity to draw his gun.

  A soft palm touched his cheek, and he desperately tried to see her, but the confines of blackness shut him out. If only he could discern a shape . . . if only she would say something to him.

  “I’ll take care of you,” she whispered, the huskiness of her tone lingering in him like sensual pleasure. She took his hand in hers and held on tightly. Then he was being bounced in the back of a wagon, having the marrow beat out of every bone in his body.

  His last conscious thought was, hell had an angel.

  Chapter

  4

  Helena, Eliazer, and Ignacia wrestled an unconscious Carrigan upstairs. Despite their efforts to move him gingerly, he ranted at each tread they took upward, and made delirious utterances that practically dislodged the chinks out of the log walls. Emilie was so horrified, she could only stand at the base of the steps with a dumbstruck expression on her face and watch.

  The hallway was narrow, making it difficult for the three of them to navigate in sync. With each run-in with the wall, Carrigan mumbled an oath. As they walked his suspended body toward the featherbed in August’s room, Helena wished she could take off the colorful quilt her mother had made. But there was no time, and worrying over its ruin wasn’t going to help matters. She needed to keep a level head.

  Once Carrigan was on the mattress with his back to the testers, he began to shiver. Though Helena had covered him with a blanket on the ride home, the snow on his clothing had melted and left water on his coat and trousers. Unclasping her cloak, she covered his long legs with the leftover warmth in the fabric. She had to work fast and opened the front of his decorative coat. The odor of spent gunpowder clung to him. Blood tainted the right underarm area of his flannel shirt, its crimson bloom spreading high over his chest. Flakes of unburned gunpowder had been forced through the hole in the coat’s leather and looked like ground pepper around the matching hole in his shirt.

  Holding her breath, she slipped the shirt buttons from their holes and slowly parted the sticky fabric. Dark specks tattooed the edges of his red-black wound, while blood smeared his right nipple, and the surrounding skin. She’d witnessed her mares giving birth and had wrapped enough brush-scraped hocks on her Express horses not to cower at the sight of blood. But the scorched smell of Carrigan’s clothes, and the violent path the iron had taken in his body, upset her stomach. She had to swallow her discomfort.

  Her gaze roved over his torso, looking for further damage. He was well built, with an upper body that spoke of exercise through hard work. His flesh tone seemed naturally tan, the kind of brown her face took on in the summer when she neglected her bonnet. He had a smooth chest, small nipples, and an abdomen corrugated with muscle. His physical appearance would have been flawless were it not for the copious scars and nicks marring his skin. The vague impression of a horse’s hoof was beneath his last rib, and what could have been the result of a
knife fight left a lasting mark on his shoulder. Other than the healed cuts and old bruises, he had no fresh wounds.

  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.