“Figured that,” I said, smiling, pretending I was a lot braver than I really was.
Lila nodded. “Now I wish you’d saved some of Pa’s whiskey.”
“So do I,” I said. “Right about now, I’d be ready to swallow the whole jug.”
“Not for you, Dusty,” the girl said. She wasn’t scolding me, just being practical. “To clean the knife blade.” She managed a small smile. “God knows where it’s been.”
I nodded toward the dying fire. “Stick the blade in the reddest part of the coals. Heat will clean it as good as whiskey.”
Lila did as she was told, and when she came back to my side after a few moments, the point of the blade glowed a dull cherry red.
The girl pushed aside my wide suspenders and held the knife close to my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Dusty,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t get a chance to answer because she immediately plunged the blade into my shoulder and I went rigid, my mouth wide-open, screaming silent screams I heard only in my head.
Lila dug deeper, her eyes intent only on the knife. Pain slammed at me time and time again and sweat trickled down my face. I clenched my teeth and arched my back, each hissing breath coming quick and shallow.
“Be brave, Dusty,” Lila whispered, her eyes not seeking mine. “Be brave.”
The knife dug deeper . . . deeper still . . . cutting . . . probing . . . grinding on lead and bone.
Jolts of agony cartwheeled through my entire body and my head was reeling, bright bursts of dazzling light exploding like Fourth of July rockets in my brain. I had to make it stop, push Lila’s hand away, admit myself to be much less than she was.
“Got it!” Lila yelled. She held up a bloody hand, the bullet held between her forefinger and thumb.
“Thank you,” I said. And promptly fainted.
I woke to Lila’s face hovering over mine, her brown eyes anxiously searching my own. “How do you feel, Dusty?” she asked.
In truth, I felt weak, drained, so I stepped around her question. “How long have I been out?” I asked.
The girl smiled. “A long time. It’s almost noon.”
My fingers strayed to my wounded shoulder and touched a thick bandage. Lila smiled. “I used a piece of my shift. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I’m honored,” I said, meaning it.
I glanced around. “Where’s . . . I mean . . .”
Lila nodded. “I laid my pa to rest while you were asleep.” She nodded toward the cottonwood. “Over there where you’d dug a trench. I made it deeper.”
I shook my head at her. “Lila, you should have waited. I’d have helped.”
Tears started in the girl’s eyes. “Death diminished Pa, made him smaller somehow. His body was small and light. I managed.” She attempted a smile. “Be sides, you couldn’t dig a grave with that shoulder.”
Yet again, I marveled at Lila’s strength. Once I’d thought her too young and too featherbrained, her ambition to farm her own land just a ramshackle castle she was building in the sky. Now I wasn’t so sure. Something told me this lovely, frail-looking girl had hidden reserves of courage and backbone I couldn’t even guess at. I knew then with growing certainty that with her own hands she could and would build a home from what had been only wilderness, as tens of thousands of hardy pioneer women had done before her and would do after.
It came to me then that I could be happy with this woman, content to sit with her quiet and close of an evening after the day’s chores were done and look out on the darkening land where our brindled cattle grazed, taking pleasure in it, knowing what lay around us had been tamed by our will and by the strength of our backs.
I reached out with my good arm and pulled Lila close to me and kissed her. It was a kiss with little passion but with much tenderness and she perfectly understood its implications.
“Dusty,” she whispered, “when this is all over and you’re back at the SP Connected, will you come calling on me?”
“Sure will,” I answered. “I’ll bring you flowers and them little motto candies all the girls like.”
“Will you call on pretty Sally Coleman and bring her flowers and candy?”
I’d walked into that little trap with my eyes wide-open and now I desperately sought a way out of it.
“Lila—” I began, having no idea what I would say next, but was saved from having to answer her question by the clatter of hooves on the trail.
Lila helped me get to my feet in time to see a column of about thirty buffalo soldiers come to a dusty, jingling halt near the wagon, their heads turning this way and that as they looked around at the dead Apaches.
What caught my eye was my paint, led by one of the troopers—and the fact that the saddlebags were still there.
The sergeant in charge, a thick-shouldered man with an eye patch and a magnificent set of sideburns, swung his horse out of the column and rode toward us.
“What went on here?” he asked, his black eyes searching mine. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
“Found this horse wandering and a dead white man back there.”
“The horse is mine, Sergeant,” I said. “You’ll find an SP brand on his flank.”
The sergeant turned in the saddle and called a trooper by name. “Check the brand on that paint, hoss,” he said.
The soldier did as he was told and yelled back. “SP, sergeant.”
The big noncom nodded and turned back to me. “The brand is as you say.” His eyes shrewd, he added: “Now tell me about the dead man back there.”
My troubles were none of this soldier’s, so in as few words as possible I told him about my troubles with Lafe Wingo, our battle with the Apaches and his killing of Ezra Owens and Ned.
After I finished speaking, the sergeant sat in silence for a few moments, then said: “Young feller, my orders are to pursue and engage hostile Apaches wherever I find them and compel them to surrender or be destroyed. All I can do for you is report what you’ve told me to the appropriate civilian authority.”
I expected nothing more and I nodded my thanks.
“Where are you folks headed?” the sergeant asked, his puzzled eyes on Lila.
“We expect to cross the Brazos at the Clear Fork later today,” I said. “Then we’ll head south to my home ranch.”
“River is low,” the soldier said, “so you’ll have no difficulty there.” He shook his head at me. “But you’re heading into a hornet’s nest. Victorio and his main band are south of the Brazos and all ain’t well in the chicken coop. The Apaches are burning and killing as far east as Abilene and I heard tell a couple of days ago they ambushed and cut up a Ranger patrol on the North Concho. Three Rangers dead and twice that many wounded is what I heard.”
“Once we clear the Brazos, it’s only a few miles to the SP ranch, Sergeant,” I said. “We’ll be safe there.”
The man nodded. “Well, I sure hope so, for your sake and the little lady’s.” His restless gaze took in the bandage on my shoulder. “Here, you’ve been hit.”
“Took one of Lafe Wingo’s bullets,” I said. “Lila cut it out for me.”
The sergeant looked at Lila, a dawning respect in his eyes. “I’ll get the doc to take a look at it,” he said.
“You have a doctor with the column?” I asked, surprised.
“Mule doctor,” the soldier replied, smiling. “But he’s right good with bullet and knife wounds. Good with the croup too, come to that.”
The mule doctor was a tall, lanky corporal with mournful eyes and gentle hands. He unbuttoned my bloodstained shirt and looked the wound over, probing carefully. “Couldn’t have done better my ownself,” he said finally. “Clean as a whistle.” He turned to Lila. “You done real good, ma’am.”
Lila smiled and dropped an elegant little curtsy. “There’s a first time for everything, Corporal,” she said.
The sergeant called the corporal over to him, leaned over from the saddle and whispered something I couldn’t hear. The soldier nodded and stepped to one of the pack mules, returning with a folded blue army shirt, which he handed to me.
“It ain’t new,” the sergeant said. “But it’s clean and in a heap better shape than the one you’re wearing.”
