“I’ll be glad to do that,” Carly replied. Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. “She was the only friend I had—the only real one.”
Keely reached out her good hand and squeezed Carly’s. “You were her only real friend,” she replied. “I’m glad she had you.”
Carly cried even harder. “I wish I could take back every mean thing I ever said to you, Keely,” she sobbed. “I didn’t really mean any of it. In the old days, I took care of you a lot when Ella couldn’t. I lost sight of that. But I’ll do anything to make it up to you now, if I can.”
“Look after Mama’s funeral arrangements,” Keely said, “and we’ll call it even.”
Carly dried her eyes. “When do you want to have it?” she asked worriedly. “You don’t look up to a funeral.”
She wasn’t. She hesitated. Boone came in the door, gave Carly a cold appraisal and moved to Keely’s bed.
“I’ve arranged for some additional manpower at the ranch,” he said without preamble. “What do you want to do about your mother?”
“Carly’s going to take care of that,” Keely said. “She knows where everything is, and she has copies of
Mama’s will and last wishes.”
Boone glanced at the older woman. “If there are any outstanding accounts, I’ll take care of them,” he said.
Carly nodded. Her eyes were as red as Keely’s. “Thanks.” She hesitated. “You know,” she said, staring meaningfully at Boone, “it might not be a bad idea to have her cremated, and the ashes buried in the family plot.”
Boone knew then that Carly had seen Ella and wanted to spare Keely the trauma of it. His eyes narrowed. “I think that’s a good idea. Keely?”
Keely wasn’t sure. She hesitated.
“A Viking funeral,” Boone said quietly. “Appropriate for a brave woman.”
Keely burst out crying again. “Yes,” she agreed, choking. “She was brave. Okay. That’s okay.”
Boone leaned over and gathered her as close as he could, kissing the tears away. “It passes,” he said softly. “Everything passes. You’ll be able to remember her with happiness one day.”
“Yes, you will,” Carly seconded. She went on the other side of the bed, and bent and kissed Keely’s disheveled hair. “I’ll go and get things started. The hospital and the funeral home may need your approval before they can proceed. I’ll have them call you here.”
“Do that,” Boone said quietly. “But I don’t think there will be a problem. You stuck by Ella when nobody else would go near her.”
Carly took that for a compliment and smiled. “Thanks.”
“If you can find that snake,” Keely told Boone, trying to lighten the somber mood, “we can arrange the same sort of funeral for him. Of course, if he didn’t die from biting me, we’ll have to kill him first.”
Boone managed a chuckle. “I’m glad to see that you’re better.”
She smiled weakly, grimacing as she moved her arm.
“Coltrain says she can go home tomorrow, so we’ll have her with us,” Boone told Carly. He pulled out his wallet, got out a business card and handed it to her. “If you need help with the arrangements, let me know.”
“Okay. If we cremate her, we can schedule a memorial service when this is all over,” Carly told him. She glanced at Keely worriedly. “You’re not going to be able to manage a funeral in the condition you’re in right now.”
“I have to agree,” Keely said. She caught her breath. “Oh, my gosh! My job! I didn’t even call Dr. Rydel! He’s going to fire me!”
“I phoned him,” Boone said at once. “He’s got a temp filling in for you. He and the staff send their best wishes. They sent you a big fruit basket. It just came, so the nurses gave it to me, but I took it out to the car. I’m taking it home. You can have it tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” she told him. “I was afraid of losing my job. I was too sick to call and tell them what was going on.”
“Oh, everybody in Comanche Wells and Jacobsville knows everything that’s going on already,” Carly said. She glanced amusedly at Boone. “And I mean everything.”
Boone’s eyes actually twinkled, but Keely didn’t see it.
Carly said her goodbyes and left Boone alone with Keely. He stuck his hands in his slacks’ pockets and stood over her, his eyes soft and quiet.
“You look a little better,” he commented.
“I wish I felt it. I’m still sick to my stomach and my arm throbs,” she said huskily. She looked up at him. “I hate snakes.”
“They don’t like people sitting on them,” he pointed out.
“I didn’t. He was just all of a sudden there. I didn’t even look at him sideways. He just rattled his head off and struck at me.”
“Nervous.”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Rattlesnakes are nervous. They rattle to try to scare people into going away.”
It had never occurred to her that a snake could be nervous. She said so.
He sighed. “Anyway, we got him.”
“You got him? You did?” She was excited.
“The boys found him about twenty feet from where you were sitting when he bit you.”
“What did they do with him?”
He pursed his lips. “Do you like cowboy hats?”
“I guess so. I don’t wear them much, except when I go riding.”
“You’ll wear this one. It’s just your size and it’s got a nice new rattlesnake hatband. Or it will have, when the skin’s tanned out.”
“You didn’t!”
“I did.” He grinned down at her. “We’ll go riding, when you’re better.”
“We will?”
One eye narrowed. “You go riding with Clark and Winnie all the time. You can go riding with me now,” he said with faint belligerence.
“Okay,” she said, fascinated. It almost sounded as if he were jealous of them. That was ridiculous, of course.
“I had a television put in your room. You can watch movies on pay-per-view. We’ve got satellite, too, so you can watch programs from all over the world.” His eyes twinkled. “Then, there’s the national news, with the presidential race on every
