A Cowboy at Heart Read online

He decided to ignore the embarrassing question and ask the easy one. “How long have I been out?”

  Before answering she stepped into the room and crossed to his bedside. A gnarled hand, not nearly as gentle or as soft as Katie’s, pressed firmly against his forehead. As if satisfied with what she felt, she gave a nod.

  “Four days and more.”

  “Four days?” He tried to jerk upright, and immediately regretted the movement. An agonizing blaze began in his head, and his back felt as though it had been ripped open. His breath caught in his throat and he coughed, which sent tortuous flames licking throughout his chest.

  “Quiet,” Maummi Switzer commanded, “lest you undo all the good your rest has done.”

  He would have argued that unconsciousness couldn’t be labeled rest, but just then he was occupied with trying to breathe without setting off another agonizing coughing spell.

  She stood watching his face, her expression unreadable, until he had regained an even, shallow breathing. Then she picked up a mug from the bedside table and held it to his lips.

  “Drink,” she commanded.

  He drank. The sweet liquid refreshed the starved tissues in his mouth and slid down his throat. The faint taste of honey mingled with something he could not place, and the result was delicious. He drained the mug dry, afraid she might take it away before he’d had his fill.

  With a satisfied set to her lips she returned the empty mug to the table. “Keep that down and there will be soup.”

  He would have protested that of course he could keep down a few swallows of sweetened tea, that in his day he’d swigged enough whiskey to float a riverboat and kept it down, but at the moment his stomach felt a bit queasy. Bragging might not be a good idea. Instead, he closed his mouth and concentrated on not throwing up.

  Maummi Switzer slid a straight-back chair across the floor to the bed and lowered herself into the seat. “It has been four days since you were shot,” she repeated, “and we feared you dead more than once. Dr. Sorensen came from Hays City and pulled a bullet from your back.” She plucked something off the table and showed him a piece of mangled lead. “Katie stitched your head, and together we have kept you clean to guard against a killing fever.”

  What being clean had to do with fever he didn’t know, but his thoughts snagged on one comment. “Did she help…you know.” He lifted a hand and pointed toward the blanket that covered his body from waist to feet. “Change my skivvies?”

  “Ach, no!” The elderly woman seemed scandalized at the thought. “A young widow has no place in such a task. I did that myself, with Jonas to help.”

  Jesse didn’t know whether to be relieved or more deeply embarrassed. He decided on the former. Maummi had birthed two babies, and Jonas was a man. Better them than a pretty young woman.

  He settled gingerly against the fluffy stuff at his back, which he decided was a small tick stuffed with feathers. Mighty glad he was for it too, because his back was sorer than he could imagine. He’d been shot before while riding the cattle trail, once in the shoulder and once in the leg, but he’d never imagined pain like this.

  “Has anybody gone after the no-good scoundrel who did this to me?”

  She did not meet his gaze as she shook her head slowly. “It is not the Plain way to retaliate.”

  If his lungs didn’t hurt so badly he would have heaved a sigh. No, of course it wasn’t. And now that he looked back on his encounter with Littlefield and his hired thugs, he was glad Jonas hadn’t tried to confront them alone. They would make mincemeat out of a mild Amish guy like him. In a few days Jesse would be up and about, and he’d settle his own grudges then.

  “That fence still up?”

  “Ja. Our Katie and the boy help Jonas carry water for the animals morning, noon, and night.”

  Jesse stared at her. Katie had a son? He’d somehow gotten the impression she’d had no children before her husband went to his rest. “The boy?”

  “Ja. One of Rebecca’s orphans, sent by her Colin to help us.” She leveled a stern gaze on him. “Because you are no help and only double the work for us all.”

  Rather than feel the barb personally, Jesse managed a feeble chuckle. If Maummi Switzer felt confident enough to jab at him, she must not be overly concerned about his recovery.

  She rose and scooted the chair back across the floor. “Rest now.”

  “Hey! You said something about soup.” He attempted only a weak protest because his head had begun to swirl and his eyelids felt as though they were being pulled closed by an unseen force.

  “A good laugh and long sleep are a doctor’s best cures.” She smiled, not unkindly. “Sleep now. Soup later.”

  He would have shot back a response, but he couldn’t manage to stay awake long enough to think of one.

  Katie pumped the handle, watching as water spilled into the bucket. The boy, Butch, stood at her side waiting for the bucket to fill, his expression solemn. Actually, his countenance rarely varied from the grave expression he now wore. The only time she’d seen something approximating a smile was when he’d been given the task of feeding Rex, who had rewarded him by nuzzling his neck.

  She stopped pumping when the water level approached the rim, and Butch bent to grab the handle with both hands.

  “Knees,” she cautioned, just as Fader had always warned her when she bent over to pick up a load. “Else your back will ache later.”

  “Yes’m.”

  He ducked his head, bent his knees, and lifted the full bucket. Water sloshed over the rim onto his already soaked trousers as he hefted his load toward the side of the barn, where Jonas had set up a watering trough for his livestock. She watched him for a second, a sad little pain in the vicinity of her heart. Rebecca said his parents had been killed by savages while on their way to claim land in the West. His mother had hidden him in the false bottom of their wagon, in a special place prepared for just such a contingency. The poor child had huddled inside, listening to the sounds of the battle that claimed the lives of his parents and all those with whom they traveled. When the wagon in which he’d hidden was set afire, he’d escaped to find the savages gone and his parents’ bodies amid the carnage of the devastated wagon train.

  Tears stung her eyes, imagining the boy’s solitary shock and grief. No one should have to endure such horrors, especially not a child. But that was the way of the world. If only everyone would see that violence was an offense to Christ and would follow His teachings as the Amish did. The only barriers to the peace He bestowed were the ones erected by angry men who refused to practice self-restraint. Her gaze strayed across the field of gently swaying wheat to the fence serving as a physical reminder that even living within the boundaries of a Plain community, violence and greed sought to shatter godly peace.

  She’d begun to pump the handle to fill yet another bucket when the door to the house opened and Maummi Switzer appeared. “He has awakened.”

  Finally! Katie released the handle and dried her hands on her apron as she headed toward the house. Though Jesse’s brief rise to consciousness yesterday had been reassuring, she would not truly be at ease until he opened his eyes and showed signs of comprehension. A blow to the head such as he’d suffered had been known to make a man feeble.

  Maummi Switzer stopped her by holding up a hand. “Sleep has overtaken him again, but he spoke with me for several minutes.”

  Disappointment halted Katie’s step. She’d hoped to be there for his first conversation. “Did he drink?”

  “Ja. The full mug of tea, and more if I had allowed.”

  “Is he…” She let the question hang. They had discussed the possible outcome of a cracked skull, and Maummi Switzer shared her concern.

  A smile deepened the creases in the elderly woman’s face. “His words are not garbled, and his mind is clear.”

  Katie breathed a relieved sigh. “Gott be praised.”

  Butch returned at that moment, the empty bucket dangling from his hand. Katie watched his rounded shoulders and steady
gait, her heart twisting at his solemn expression. How unfair for a child to have his laughter stolen by sorrow. If only he would run and laugh and play, instead of this somber attention to the chores assigned him. Perhaps if there were other boys his age nearby? But no, three others lived with Rebecca and Colin in the big house beside their Englisch church building, and Emma said Butch was ever on the sidelines, watching the others at play but rarely joining in.

  “Butch, a task I have for you.” She spoke in a kindly voice as he approached the pump. “Please to take a message to Mr. Switzer. Tell him Jesse has awakened.”

  Interest sparked in the eyes that flicked toward the house. “He’s okay, then?”

  The child had expressed concern for Jesse since Luke delivered him yesterday, even going so far as to offer to help with nursing tasks. That Butch thought highly of Jesse was obvious. In a hushed voice, Luke had told her and the Switzers that the boy had practically insisted on being allowed to come and help as soon as he heard of Jesse’s injuries. Because this was the first time he’d displayed emotion for a task since being delivered into the Maddoxs’ care by a preacher in Hays City, they had not the heart to deny him.

  “Apparently he looks to Jesse as some sort of hero or something,” Luke had told them, shaking his head. “No accounting for why. It’s not like Jesse has spent much time with him, or any of those boys for that matter.”

  Katie had considered the matter last night, and she thought she understood why. Though Jesse could be engaging and jovial, he was primarily a solitary man, often wrapped up in his own thoughts. The few times she’d seen him while visiting with Emma, she’d noticed a pensive, almost tortured expression on his face when he thought no one was looking. She’d seen a similar expression on Butch’s face last evening while he emptied the slops into the hog trough after supper. No doubt the child sensed a common bond in their troubled pasts.

  Butch was waiting for her reply.

  “Weak, but well.” She smiled at the child’s obvious relief. “He is sleeping again, as he will do often until he regains his strength, but he spoke with Maummi Switzer.”

  Butch silently set the bucket down beside Katie’s half-filled one and headed toward the empty field east of the barn, where Jonas’s black-and-white-clad figure could be seen walking in the distance. Katie was happy to note that the child’s step had a slight bounce that had been absent before now.

  “A good boy is that one,” commented Maummi Switzer. “Our Rebecca says his grief for his mader and fader keeps him apart from the others, but she is determined to love him as her own.”

  With a final glance toward the child, she disappeared into the house. Katie returned to the pump, a familiar ache pulsing deep inside her chest. How well she understood the loneliness of grief. In the months after Samuel’s death, she thought she would drown in it, and she would have welcomed death as a way to join her beloved. But even before then she had become acquainted with grief. In all the years of their marriage, the joy of motherhood had been denied her. At first, when her womb did not quicken, there had been little concern. Many waited months before becoming pregnant, her mother assured her. Her body needed more time to prepare for motherhood. Katie consoled herself with the knowledge that the Lord would bless her and Samuel with a child in His perfect timing. But when month after month passed, and the women at church services began watching her waist for signs of thickening, she grew concerned.

  A full year after her wedding day, she quietly inquired of Martha Hostetler, who had birthed every baby in Apple Grove since the first families settled here. Martha had instructed her to drink a tea of oat straw and nettle leaves nightly. Though she’d faithfully obeyed, the first year stretched into a second. Samuel finally suggested that she see an Englisch doctor, where she had undergone the most humiliating examination of her life, and for nothing. The doctor had pronounced her healthy with no apparent cause for her barrenness.

  Barren. Even now the word brought a bitter taste to her mouth. She pumped with a vigor born of misery, and water sloshed over the rim of the bucket. Five years of marriage, and not a single sign of pregnancy. There had been a few instances when her hopes had risen, only to be dashed when the inevitable proof of her barrenness arrived. At last the curious glances of the women had stopped, and their absence was even more devastating. The pitying looks awarded to Samuel were the hardest of all to endure, but eventually even those ceased. Everyone had accepted the fact that Katie Miller would never bear a child.

  Water sloshed into the second bucket, and Katie pushed the pump handle one last time. She picked up both buckets, one in each hand, and made her way to the watering trough, around which a double handful of cattle had gathered for their afternoon drink.

  SIX

  The next time Jesse woke the pounding in his head had lessened perceptibly. Every muscle of his body ached, but he was able to draw in a cautious breath without feeling as though he’d been stabbed through the chest with a bayonet. He cracked open an eye experimentally, and a flicker of panic threatened when he could see nothing. Had he gone blind? A moment later he spied the faint outline of curtains drawn over the window and breathed a relieved sigh. Night had fallen while he slept.

  His mouth again felt like a dust storm had blown through it, and his lips were dry and chapped. Moving cautiously, he turned his head toward the small table and squinted at the contents on its surface. Had Maummi Switzer left him a mug of that whatever-it-was she’d given him earlier? Darkness obscured his view, and he couldn’t make out details. He lifted his arm in an attempt to feel for the mug.

  Owwwwwweeee! The movement sent agony ripping through his back, and he sucked in an involuntary breath that resulted in a torturous paroxysm in his lungs. A groan escaped his lips as he dropped his arm. In a distant part of his mind he took satisfaction from the fact that he’d produced more volume than previous efforts to moan.

  The rustling of fabric preceded someone’s appearance in the doorway beyond his feet.

  “You are awake?” asked a soft voice. Not Maummi. Must be Katie.

  “Y-yeah.” He snapped his mouth shut, embarrassed at his wavering tone.

  “Wait. I will fetch a light.”

  Everyone else must be asleep, for a deep quiet permeated the house. He traced her progress by the faint sound of her footsteps in the room beyond the one in which he lay. A brief scratching noise, and then a yellow gleam illuminated the darkness through the doorway. It grew brighter as she returned and then Katie stepped into his room, her face aglow with candlelight.

  She drew near, holding the candle aloft while she inspected him. Whatever she saw must have satisfied her, because she gave a brief nod. “Are you thirsty?”

  “Am I ever. I feel like I could drain the Rio Grande.” He matched her whispered tone, mindful that Maummi Switzer probably slept lightly, and he wanted a chance to talk to Katie without Maummi’s watchful gaze. His stomach threatened a rumble. “And my stomach is so empty it feels like the front is touching the back.”

  A smile curved her soft lips. “I will be back.”

  She took the candle with her, and he strained to hear signs of her movements. It seemed hours before a warm halo of light heralded her return. In her hands she carried a tray, and he was relieved to see not only a mug but an earthenware bowl as well.

  She seated herself in the chair by his bed and set the tray on the floor. “First, drink.”

  When she lifted the mug to his lips he started to protest that he could certainly feed himself, but he remembered the agony moving his arm a few minutes before had caused. He drank, cautiously at first and then greedily, downing the contents as quickly as she would allow. She rewarded his efforts with a smile and returned the mug to the tray.

  When she lifted the bowl and spoon, he caught a delicious whiff of something. His poor empty stomach gave an eager rumble.

  “I’ve never been so hungry in all my born days.” He tilted his head to see over the rim of the bowl.

  “’Tis only broth.” S
he held it close for his inspection. “You must go easy at first.”

  “Broth.” His enthusiasm gave way to a scowl. “I could eat a whole side of beef on my own. But at least I can feed myself.”

  Moving cautiously, he lifted his left arm and made as if to take the spoon from the bowl. But no sooner had he grasped it than his fingers began a mighty trembling. Disgusted, he released the utensil and it splashed back into the broth.

  Her chuckle wasn’t without sympathy as she picked up the spoon. “Your strength will return in a few days.”

  “Not if all I’m fed is broth,” he grumbled, but he allowed her to place a spoonful inside his mouth. Oh, how delicious. Surely this was the best broth in all of Kansas, rich and savory with just the right amount of spice to satisfy a starving belly. Eagerly, he opened his mouth for a second taste.

  “Your head still hurts?” Her glance flickered upward toward his scalp.

  “I’ll say.” He lifted his left hand and pressed gingerly at the sorest place. His fingers found a lump, and a prickly line along a scab. “Whew. I don’t think my hat will fit over that hen’s egg for a while.”

  “It is much reduced. Jonas found the rock you fell on, and one side was jagged and sharp. If your head had hit that side…” Her brows rose meaningfully.

  What was it Maummi Switzer had said about Katie? “Thank you for sewing my scalp back together. And for everything else too.”

  She rewarded him with a smile as she lifted another spoonful of broth to his lips.

  “Any word of those low down, no-goods who shot me?”

  “Neh.” Despite her denial, she looked troubled and did not meet his eye.

  “What?” he prodded. “Something else has happened. I see it in your face.”

  She shook her head. “Truly, nothing has happened. Only, every day two men ride their horses along the fence and look at us.”

  “They do, do they?” He had no trouble imagining Woodard and Sawyer directing a menacing glare across the wheat field. Pathetic, trying to intimidate an Amish man and a couple of women. Just wait until he was up and around. He glanced toward the place where his holster hung from the wall peg. He’d teach them a thing or two about intimidation. But next time he might need a partner alongside him.