Chapter 18

In the cold winter twilight, Shea Waterston and Tyler Morran stood over the two fresh graves. They'd come together to bury their dead, Ty's father and Shea's longtime companion. They'd done it just the two of them, and the man who dug the graves.

He stood a little way off with his hat in one hand and his shovel in the other while Shea read the simple, comforting words of the Twenty-third Psalm. Then Ty stepped up to the lip of his father's grave. "I—I just want you to know, Pa," he offered quietly, "I'm going to miss you, and that I hope dying didn't hurt too much. I want you to know I really tried to be a good son to you. I did my best to take care of you, especially after Mama died. Shea says you're in heaven with Mama now, and that she's looking after you instead of me. I know you been pining for her for a good long while, so I hope that's where you are and that you're happy again. I'm going to say good-bye now, Pa. You know I love you. I promise I won't forget you—nor Mama, neither."

Ty looked up at Shea when he was done. She saw that soft, earnest face through a film of tears and smiled at him. "You did well speaking to your father," she told him softly. "Would you mind if I said a few words to him, too?"

When he shook his head, Shea wrapped her arm around Ty's shoulders and pulled him close. She cleared her throat. "I just want you to know, Sam, that I'll do everything I promised this morning. I'll take care of your boy. I'll love him as if he was my own." Shea squeezed Ty extra tight. "I'll see that he grows into a man we can both be proud of. And, Sam, I want to thank you for trusting me with him. I'll do my very best to live up to what you expect of me."

Shea stood there listening to the wind humming through the grass, feeling the cold seep through her clothes. Feeling the warmth of the child she was hugging against her.

She'd done a good deal of thinking since this morning at the jailhouse. She'd thought about Sam and Ty, about Cam and Lily. She'd thought about Rand and his future and how she'd given him up a second time. It was different from the first. Though she still ached with love and regret, there was no sorrow or resentment or devastating sense of loss in it.

Maybe that was because she wasn't alone anymore, because she'd been given another child to mother and care for. Not that Ty was second best—he'd touched her heart from the first time she'd seen him. She understood Ty with a clarity and insight she'd never had for Rand. Ty was like her. She knew what drove him. She recognized her pride in him, her common sense, and her concern for people weaker than she. She was proud of the way Ty had looked after his father and the stubbornness with which he'd stood by him.

He was also a child with a dislike for school, a penchant for trouble, and an affinity for strays. Which probably meant they'd have a houseful of ill-tempered, scraggly things just like Rufus. The thought made her smile.

She hugged Ty hard, then stepped to the foot of Owen's grave.

She had some last things to say to him, a few final words to send him to his rest.

"Owen, my old dear," she began and drew a shaky breath, "you and I have traveled a long, twisting road together. I want to thank you for being my friend and companion for every mile. I ask your forgiveness for the times I was impatient with you, but I think you understood I just didn't know what it was you needed.

"I want you to know that my life is richer for knowing you and for everything you taught me. Every time I make a photograph I'll think of you and miss your company and your skill. You were a fine, brave man, old dear, and you were the very last person in the world to realize it."

When she finished it seemed wrong to walk away from the open graves, so she and Ty stood there together and watched the grave digger do his work. The sound of clods of dirt on a wooden casket was one of the most mournful sounds in the world, and one Shea had heard far too often in her life.

They stood there into full dark, and when he was done she pressed two silver dollars into the grave digger's loamy hands. Shea and Ty stood over the people they'd loved and lost a few moments longer.

"Sleep well," she finally whispered, "both of you." Then, with Ty tucked beneath her arm, she turned toward home.

* * *

Shea had just gotten into bed when someone came pounding on the studio door. She snatched up a shawl and her Winchester and went to answer it. Sheriff Cook stood outside on the landing. With the help of one of his deputies, he was holding Cam up.

Panic swooped down on her and her belly went cold. "Mary, Mother of God!" she whispered, swinging the door wide to let them in. "What's happened to Cam? How badly is he hurt?"

"Not as bad as all that," Cam mumbled, though his head lolled to the side when he tried to raise it.

As Shea lit a lamp and led them into the cramped little bedroom, Sheriff Cook gave her a more precise answer. "He caught a bullet down low in the ribs. It doesn't look like it did too much damage, but he's lost some blood."

As the two men lowered Cam to the bed, his jacket and vest fell open. A big dark stain blossomed halfway up the front of his shirt, and his trousers were stiff with blood, too.

"Lost some blood?" she echoed as she fumbled open the buttons on his shirt. Someone had wrapped a makeshift bandage around Cam's waist, but red had soaked through the thick pad of cloth.

"Has anyone gone for Dr. Farley?" she asked, taking up a pair of scissors and snipping carefully through his clothes.

"Not Emmet," Cam protested, opening his eyes for emphasis. "Not Emmet!"

"We sent for old Doc Burns," Dan Cook told her. "He's dug out more bullets than any man I know. I figured if Cam didn't want Emmet Farley, Dr. Burns was the next best thing."

Shea didn't ask why Cam didn't want Emmet to treat him. But he needed care—and quickly. There was more color in her bleached muslin pillowcases than there was in Cam's face.

The chill of seeing him like this began in the pit of Shea's belly and spread outward, crystallizing the air in her lungs, making her fingers clumsy as she worked over him.

"Then hurry Dr. Burns along, will you?" she said through gritted teeth, trying not to shout her frustration at the two tall men hovering at the end of the bed.

"I'll go get him," Ty offered from the doorway.

Shea glanced up and saw him standing there, shoving the tail of his nightshirt into the waistband of his trousers. He was nearly as pale as Cam was, but she nodded for the boy to go.

He didn't get far. Before he got his boots on and made it out the door, there was the trudge of footsteps on the stairs. Dr. Burns filled the doorway as he shouldered past Ty and the deputy to get to the bed.

"What happened?" he asked, setting his doctor's satchel aside and bending over Cam.

"Cam got shot going after Wes Seaver and his brother Jake," Sheriff Cook reported from where he was easing off Cam's boots.

"And did he get them?" the doctor asked, peeling back the bandages and prodding Cam's wound.

Cam flinched away from the doctor's touch and stifled a moan. For an instant Shea's knees went weak and she had to fight down the burn of bile that backed up in her throat.

"He got both Wes Seaver and his brother before they shot him," Sheriff Cook answered with a hint of admiration in his voice. "Looked like quite a fight to me."

"Good for you, Cam," the doctor said giving Cam's wound another poke. "Didn't think for a minute that rubbish in the papers about him riding with the bushwackers could be true."

"Is—is he going to be all right?" Shea asked, in spite of herself.

"Oh, Cam's as tough as they come," the doctor answered gruffly, "but we need to cut that bullet out. You going to be able to help me with that, little lady, or are you going to up and faint on me?"

Shea had tended Simon all through his illness, but she'd never had experience with bullet wounds. Nothing with blood and the kind of pain that was hovering just beneath the surface of Cam's tense features. But she didn't want to be shunted off into a corner somewhere to wait for word, either.

She stiffened her spine. "I can help."

"Good," the doctor murmured. "Go get some water boiling. I'm going to need a pan to soak my instruments, and something to use for bandages."

The doctor tugged off his coat, then opened his bag and pulled out his case of instruments and several glass-stoppered bottles.

"Just get the damned thing out," Cam muttered when he saw that Burns was opening a bottle of chloroform. "I don't need that."

"The hell you don't," the doctor muttered and lowered a gauze mask over Cam's nose and mouth.

* * *

Shea was asleep in the chair in the corner of the bedroom when someone came scratching on the door of the studio. She roused with a blink and looked across at where Cam was lying on the bed, pallid and still as a corpse. Alarm crushed down on her at the pale waxen look of him. Though she could see the regular rise and fall of his chest and hear the rhythm of his breathing, it didn't help what she was feeling.

When the scratching came again, she rose stiffly and gathered up the blanket she'd wrapped around herself for warmth. She took up her Winchester, too, and went to see who was disturbing them now.

Emmet Farley stood hunched and shivering on the landing.

"What time is it?" she asked around a yawn.

"About three o'clock in the morning," he told her. "I was out delivering a baby and heard about Cam when I got back. How is he?"

"Doctor Burns says he's doing well enough, but he's scaring me half to death," she told him honestly.

Emmet pressed his lips together before he spoke. "Would you mind if I had a look?"

Her instinct was to let him in, let him examine Cam, let him reassure her. Instead she hesitated. "Why didn't Cam want you taking care of him?"

Emmet let out a heavy sigh. "It's as cold as the backside of the moon out here. Can't I come in before I explain it?"

She could see the droop of his shoulders and dark smudges of fatigue beneath his eyes. His concern warred with her need to stand by Cam and what he'd wanted. Still, Emmet had come here instead of heading home to bed...

Shea capitulated and opened the door.

Emmet stepped past her and hooked his coat over the coatrack. Then, taking his bag in hand, he went directly into the bedroom. Without so much as a word, he took Cam's pulse, listened to his chest, and checked his bandage.

Cameron never moved.

Shea hung tight to the rail at the foot of the bed until Emmet finished his examination. "So how is he?"

"He's doing as well as can be expected. Dr. Burns did a fine job getting the bullet out, and there's no sign of infection. Cam's a little feverish, but that isn't uncommon as the body starts to heal itself. He lose a lot of blood?"

Shea inclined her head.

"That will slow him down some."

"But he's going to be all right?"

"He's going to be fine." Emmet did his best to smile at her. "But he's a damned lucky man. An inch or two in any direction and..."

Shea had figured by the cautious way Dr. Burns probed for the bullet that the wound could have been a whole lot more serious than it was. She couldn't bear thinking about how close Cam had come to getting himself killed.

She shuddered in spite of herself and pulled the blanket tighter. "If I make you a cup of tea," she proposed, "will you tell me why Cam didn't want you here?"

Emmet rubbed at his long, stubbly jaw and heaved a tired sigh. "I suppose I've done a whole lot more to earn a cup of tea. But, Shea..."

"Yes?"

"You wouldn't have a 'wee dram' of whiskey to put in that tea, would you?"

She saw all at once how shaken Emmet was that Cam had been shot, how much he regretted whatever it was that had come between them.

She flashed him a smile. "I've got a key to downstairs, and I know where Agnes Franklin hides her nip bottle."

A few minutes later they were seated on either side of the desk in the entry, drinking tea laced with Agnes Franklin's excellent brandy. As the liquor started to warm her from the inside out, Shea glanced across at Emmet.

"So what was it that happened between you and Cam? Why didn't he want you here last night?"

Emmet braced his forearms against the table and looked at her. "Did you know Cam rode with the guerrillas during the war?"

Shea nodded.

"Did you know before you saw it on the front page of the Rocky Mountain News?" he demanded. When she nodded again, he went on. "Well, I didn't. I was stunned when I saw the newsboys hawking the paper on the street. At first I thought it must be some kind of mistake, but once I'd read the story and realized it was true, all I could think about was Lily. All I could think about was what that news was going to do to her. I thought I should be the one to tell her since Cam hadn't had the courage to do it in all these years.

"So I hightailed it out to the farm. I'd barely arrived, barely had time to show Lily the newspaper, when Cam came riding up the drive."

Emmet ran his hand through his already ruffled hair. "After I saw how devastated she was reading that news story, I would have done anything in the world to protect her, to spare her the pain of confronting him. So I met him on the porch and told him to go away."

"And she let you do that?" Shea asked, surprised that Lily had been so meek. "Didn't she want to know what Cam had to say? Didn't she want to give him a chance to explain? Didn't you?"

"She came to the door while I was talking to Cam. It was seeing how upset she was, seeing that she was crying that made him leave."

Having Lily refuse to see him, refuse to hear what he had to say must have all but torn out Cam's heart. Small wonder he'd showed up at the studio the way he had, so much the worse for drink, so in need of solace. In need of her.

"Is Lily all right?" Shea asked him. She knew what it was like to have your whole word crumble beneath your feet, to have everything altered from one moment to the next.

Emmet stared past her for a moment, then his angular face softened with the wisp of a smile. "Lily is a remarkable woman," was all he said.

"Should I send word to her about Cam?" Shea wondered. "If she hasn't heard about what happened already, she'll want to know. She'll want to know he's here with me, and that as bad as he looks right now, he's going to get better."

"I'm headed out there now. I'll explain everything that's happened," Emmet assured her and set his cup aside. "And now that you've let me examine Cam, I'll be able to reassure her."

"Do you think Lily will be in to see him soon?" she asked hopefully.

Emmet rose and reached for his bag. "I expect she'll come by in a day or so when his head is clearer so they can talk. But I doubt Rand will be able to wait that long."

"All this has upset him, hasn't it?" Shea asked softly, concern for the child as strong as it was for his father.

"He doesn't know what to think, and I hardly blame him," Emmet admitted on a sigh and pulled a small, corked bottle of amber-brown liquid out of his bag. "Did Dr. Burns leave you any laudanum?"

"For Cam, you mean?"

Emmet laughed and shook his head. "Not for Cam; for you."

"But surely I shouldn't be taking—"

"For your peace of mind," he clarified. "Cam's the worst patient I've ever treated. When he broke his ankle a couple years back, Lily was ready to throttle him before a week was out." Emmet pressed the square little bottle into her hand. "Cam's as strong as an ox, and he'll mend fast if he stays in bed. This is how you keep him there—for a couple of days, at least."

Shea looked down at the laudanum. "He won't like this."

Emmet raised his eyebrows. "Well, no, he won't. But it's what's best for him."

He reiterated Dr. Burns's instructions about Cam's food and medicine, and what she could do to make him more comfortable.

The night was turning to hazy gray when they stepped outside. "Thank you for coming, Emmet," Shea said quietly. "I appreciate it, even if Cam probably won't."

"Then just don't tell him I was here," he offered with a shrug. "And, Shea, I truly am sorry about Owen. He was a good man, and just beginning to find himself again."

"I think he found himself yesterday afternoon."

She reached for him, hugged him, and let him go. She watched him down the steps, then turned and went back into the studio. She glided through those dim, quiet rooms, checking on Ty, downing the last of her tea, and returning to the bedroom.

In spite of Emmet's reassurances, Cam hadn't moved and his stillness frightened her. She settled gingerly on the edge of the bed and took his hand. For a moment it lay cold and lax in hers, then slowly Cam's fingers curled, clasping hers even in sleep.

She let out her breath and stared down at him. How had this man come to mean so much to her? When had she begun to feel so much a part of him, so interwoven in his life and family? What would she have done if he'd died out there on the prairie today?

Stark, breathless dread quivered at the core of her, a feeling that was resonant and ominous, and far too familiar. She'd lost so much over the years, so many of the people she loved that Shea didn't think she could bear losing anyone else. Especially Cam.

Seeking closeness and reassurance and surcease, Shea eased down on the bed along Cam's uninjured side. She pressed her face against the smooth, firm flesh of his upper arm, and sought his warmth. Yet close as she was to him, as solid and safe as he seemed, the fear lingered in her as slow, silent tears crept down her cheeks.