Sam started to smile and nod at her. He was in mid-nod, though, when the urge to yawn gripped him. He couldn’t hold it back. His mouth opened wide before he could stop it. All he could do was cover the yawn sheepishly with his hand.
Elizabeth laughed.
The soft sound didn’t waken the older woman, who now snored on the other side of the hogan. Sam chuckled, too, and grinned at the redhead.
“I can tell by your accent you’re not really fresh from Killarney,” he said. “Where are you from?”
“Bennington, Vermont, actually,” she told him. “What about you?”
“Montana. Like I said, my mother was a teacher. My father was Medicine Horse of the Cheyenne.”
“I don’t think I’ll be marrying one of my students here in Arizona.”
“Then we are in Arizona?” Sam asked. “Matt and I were talking about that earlier today ... before the shooting started.”
Elizabeth nodded.
“Yes, in Sweetwater Valley, about twenty miles west of Flat Rock.”
“I didn’t think there was any sweet water in these parts.”
“You should know that Indians are capable of irony,” Elizabeth said with a smile.
“What’s this Flat Rock you mentioned? I don’t reckon I’ve heard of it. Some natural landmark?”
“No, it’s a town,” she said. “The closest town to this spot. I took the stagecoach there from Chinle.”
Sam shook his head.
“Must not have been there for very long. It’s been a few years since Matt and I rode through this area.”
“All I know is that it has a rather rough reputation. The stage line ends there, and the driver said he would be glad to turn around and start back to civilization.”
Calling anywhere in this region “civilization” was stretching things a mite, Sam thought. A lot of it had been unchanged for hundreds of years.
Matt stirred and let out a low moan. Elizabeth leaned over him with a frown for a moment, then got the cloth wet again in the basin of water on the ground beside her and wiped it over his forehead.
“He needs proper medical care,” she said, “but I’m afraid this is about all we can do for him.”
Sam nodded.
“Matt’s strong. He’ll pull through this all right.”
His voice was confident. He just wished his heart was.
But Elizabeth was right. All they could do was try to keep Matt comfortable and wait for his fever to break.
Chapter 8
Two days later, it did. Big drops of greasy sweat formed on Matt’s face as his temperature went down. As the sun came up that morning, he was groggy but awake again.
“Sam ... ?” he whispered as he saw his blood brother sitting beside him and looking down at him anxiously.
“Just take it easy,” Sam told him. “You were real sick for a while, but I think you’re better now.”
Juan Pablo’s wife knelt beside Matt and removed the poultices from the wounds. Those poultices had been changed several times while Matt was in the grip of the fever.
Each time Sam had seen the bullet holes, his worry had deepened. The wounds were angry-looking, and streaks of red radiated out away from them. He knew that the festering threatened to spread all through Matt’s body.
But now the redness had faded so much it was almost invisible. The poultices had drawn the corruption out of Matt’s flesh. The wounds were beginning to pucker a little, too. Soon they would close up and start to heal.
The woman covered the holes with pieces of clean cloth and bound the bandages in place with long strips of rawhide. Sam hadn’t seen her smile even once since he and Matt had been here, but now she as she looked at him and nodded, her expression wasn’t as severe as it had been. He took that as a good sign.
“We’re still in the Navajo canyon?” Matt asked.
“That’s right. You’ve been too sick to move you. Juan Pablo’s wife has been taking care of you, along with Miss Fleming.”
“That’s mighty nice of ’em. Hasn’t been ... any trouble?”
“Nope.”
“No sign of those ... bushwhackers?”
“No, but I’ve been thinking about what happened. Either we almost stumbled into something they didn’t want us to see ... or somebody sent them after us because they wanted us dead.”
“Who would ... send hired killers after us?”
“I don’t know, but I’d like to find out for sure one way or the other.”
“Yeah,” Matt agreed, “if somebody’s after us ... it’d come in handy to know who and why.” He sighed. “Soon as I ... get some of my strength back ... we’ll see if we can pick up their trail.”
Sam shook his head.
“You’re not going to be in any shape to travel for a while. Right now, though, since it looks like you’re going to be all right, I need to find Juan Pablo and go talk to Caballo Rojo. I want to make sure it’s all right with him before I try to leave the canyon.”
“Leave the canyon? I told you, I’m gonna have to rest up some first ...”
“It’ll be at least a week before you’re on your feet again, Matt. The trail’s already several days old. If we wait until you’re strong enough to travel, it’ll be so cold there’s a good chance we’ll never be able to find those varmints. Unless they ambush us again, and we won’t have any warning of that coming if we don’t know who they are.”
“Yeah, but you can’t track them down by yourself,” Matt protested.
“Why not? I know we make a good team, but I can take care of myself, you know. And I’m a better tracker than you are, too.”
“Durned well ought to be, since you’re half-Indian,” Matt muttered. “But that still won’t stop you from going off and gettin’ yourself killed.”
“Have a little faith,” Sam said as he got to his feet.
“You’re just gonna leave me here?”
“You’ll be well taken care of, and Caballo Rojo has given his word that you’ll be safe. Anyway, I don’t think the ladies would let anything happen to you. They’ve worked too hard pulling you through to lose you now.”
“Where is that ... pretty little redhead?”
“Miss Fleming, you mean?”
“I don’t reckon there are too many other redheads around here,” Matt said.
“She’s around. She’s got to get some rest sometime, you know. Taking care of you will wear a person out.” Sam grinned. “I ought to know.”
“Do I remember her sayin’ ... she’s a schoolteacher? My memory’s a mite fuzzy right now.”
“That’s right. From Vermont.”
“And we run into her in the middle of nowhere,” Matt muttered. “If that don’t beat all.”
Sam found Juan Pablo sitting on a rock beside the creek, restringing a bow. The warrior glanced up and grunted, but didn’t say anything.
“Matt’s fever finally broke,” Sam reported. “He’s feeling a lot better.”
“Good. We will not have to trouble ourselves dragging his body away from the canyon for the coyotes and the buzzards to feast upon.”
Sam swallowed the angry retort that almost sprang to his lips. He and Matt were guests of the Navajo, after all. Anyway, he should be used to Juan Pablo’s surly nature by now, he told himself.
“I’d like to speak with Caballo Rojo.”
That drew some interest from Juan Pablo. He looked up with a frown and asked, “Why?”
“Because I want to find those men who bushwhacked us and make them tell me what it was all about.”
Juan Pablo grunted again.
“Probably they were thieves who wanted to rob you. All white men are thieves.”
“I suppose they could have been, but Matt and I didn’t look like very tempting targets for a robbery.”
That was true. Despite the fact that neither of the young men had to worry about money because of the ranches they owned in Montana, nobody could tell that by looking at them. They had good horses, and their guns were relatively new and well-cared-for, but other than that they appeared to be typical, down-on-their-luck drifters and grub-line riders.