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The building of Suzette’s house had to be put off until spring, as winter arrived earlier than anyone expected and brought with it an unusual number of storms. The mountain passes filled with snow and the Navajo moved down from the mountains to their winter camp, a few miles above the Donovan range. With a lull in the bad weather just after Thanksgiving, Daniel and Jake went out to hunt.
After a full day’s effort, they’d managed to kill a pronghorn buck. They’d slung him upside-down on a branch they carried on their shoulders. As snow began to swirl around them, Daniel called a halt; digging his compass out of his pants pocket, he pointed downhill, to the southwest.
“’Bout five more miles,” he said. Jake made a noise he construed as disgust. “It won't kill you. We can take ten minutes to rest.”
“Wish there was something to sit on.”
“Way it goes, kid. What are you doing?”
“I saw—” With that, Jake fell to one knee. The rifle he’d cocked went off as he went down.
“Jake!”
“I’m all right.” The boy struggled to his feet. “I saw a snowshoe hare—but I guess I stuck my foot in a hole.”
Daniel grabbed his arm and hauled him up as the mountain above them began to thunder. “Can you run? Come on! This way!” He leaped off on a course across the path of the oncoming avalanche.
“Jake! NOW!”
But his brother wasn’t as agile. As Daniel sped clear, he looked back to see Jake rolling head over heels down, down, down the side of the mountain, the snow gathering him up, pulling him in, until he disappeared completely.
***
ANNIE HAD BEEN DISTRAUGHT all day, so when her brother said he had a delivery to take to the Donovans, she begged him to drop her off. She knew he agreed only to get away from her raw emotions. Brian answered her knock and, taking the wheel of cheese from her arms, he ushered her into the back parlor where Jesse sat close to the fire. Her eyes were too bright and splotches of fever stained her cheeks. As she took Jesse’s hot hand in hers, Annie let herself relax—Jesse was here, where she’d be well taken care of. There was nothing to worry about. She felt a bit foolish, but shrugged it off.
“How are you?” she asked Jesse.
“I haven’t been feeling too good.” Jesse’s eyes were green as emeralds against her pale skin. A racking cough overtook her and it was some moments before she could continue. “We came to see—” Again her words were cut off by the cough. Her bluetick hound, Moze, sat her feet whining.
“We come t’ see Mother,” Brian put in. “Irene’s puttin’ up some tea for us t’ take home. If Mother even lets us go. Said she wants Miss Jesse t’ stay a few days.”
“Where is she?” Annie inquired.
“Adam drove her an’ Dad t’ Benson’s for supper. But Rebecca’s here, too. She’s cookin’,” Brian added happily.
“Where’s Daniel?”
“Wal... him an’ Jake went huntin’. They was s’posed t’ be back yestid—
“Miss Annie! Miss Annie!” Brian’s arm was supporting her before Annie even realized she’d fallen off the chaise. He helped her up and sat her next to Jesse, who took her hands and rubbed them briskly.
“Get her some water, please,” she asked Brian. “Annie, don’t worry. Please, don’t worry. It will be... all right.”
Not the words but the wrenching cough brought Annie back. She put her arm around Jesse’s shoulders and held her until the fit was over.
“Hush,” Annie whispered. “Don’t try to talk. I’m all right, really I am.” The women clung to one another until Brian returned with a glass of water. Irene followed him with Jesse’s tea.
“Thank you,” Annie said in a tiny voice. “I’m all right now.”
“Are you sure?” whispered Jesse. “Thanks, Irene.”
“Drink up that tea so you’ll feel better,” Irene told her. “And you’re supposed to be quiet. I’ll find you a pencil and pad—if you want to say something, write it down!”
Jesse stuck her tongue out at her sister-in-law; Irene made a face back and rummaged through the dainty cherry desk that had been her grandmother’s.
“Here,” she said to Jesse, “now be still! Annie, are you sure you’re okay?”
But Annie jumped to her feet and ran into the hall. “Daniel!”
“It’s all right, aroon.” The rough voice was a relief to those who couldn’t see him. Brian helped Jesse to her feet as Daniel entered with Jake slung over his shoulder.
“Oh, what happened?” Irene cried. “Jake, are you all right?”
“Gosh, what a ride! I thought my gut would bust open!” As Daniel dumped him on the chaise, Jake rubbed his stomach. “Brother, you gotta do something about those bony shoulders!”
“You’re all right?” Jesse was kneeling at his feet on the floor, her face ghostly pale, her hands clutching nervelessly at his knee.
“I’m fine. Really, Jesse, don’t worry. It’s just my ankle.”
“What happened?” asked Brian.
Daniel took Annie’s hand as he responded. “Not much, really. Jake fell and hurt his ankle and I had to pack him home again. That’s why we’re so late—he’s no featherweight any more!” With that, he pulled the knife from his boot and approached his youngest brother again.
“Daniel!” Jesse’s eyes were wide with horror.
“I’m going to cut his boot off,” he said with a chuckle. “The ankle’s swollen and I can’t tell if it’s broken or just sprained. Don’t worry, little sister. No surgery performed today.
“Irene, could you get us some ice? And a towel to wrap it in. Annie, come on over here, please. You and Jesse can hold the top of this boot. Brian, you hold his leg still. And listen, brother,” he said to Jake, “no sudden moves. Got it?”
“Oh, yeah,” the lad responded. He’d seen that knife cut through fresh hide like butter. “I’m a statue, believe me.”
Within seconds, the deerskin boot and the sock beneath it were removed. Jake’s ankle was swollen and discolored right down to his toes. “Wow! No wonder it hurts!”
“Can you move your toes?” Annie asked him. He grimaced with the effort, then shook his head. She looked up at Daniel. “What do you think?”
“Don’t know. He should be able to move them if it’s only a sprain. But, boy, they sure are swollen, aren’t they?”
“Mebbe I should go for Doc,” Brian suggested.
Jesse shook her head vehemently. “Ask Rebecca to look at it,” she wrote.
“I’ll get her.” Without waiting for an answer, Annie turned and ran from the room.
“Wow,” Jake repeated, as Irene brought in a towel and a basin full of snow in lieu of ice. “It’s sure a beauty, ain’t it?”
“Doesn’t it hurt?” his sister asked.
“Some. But it feels a lot better now the boot’s off.” He held the boot up to his brother. “Guess I’ll have to make another one now, huh?”
“Kid, from the looks of that foot, you gonna have plenty of time to sit around making boots!”
“Oh, my,” Rebecca said from the doorway. Wearing a simple gray dress and white apron, she stared down at the lad’s foot—where it wasn’t blue, it was bright red from the cold, or black where the blood was trapped under the skin. “Looks like you did a good job. What exactly happened?”
“Well, I tripped over a root. But it didn’t seem too bad then. I kept on going for a little ways until it gave out. I twisted it again, I guess, and I fell against a rock. See that cut there? That’s where the rock hit it.”
“Can you move your toes?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, that’s not too surprising.” Rebecca knelt before him. “You say this happened yesterday?”
“Around three o’clock,” Daniel put in.
“Yes, it’s had a good long time to swell up. That may be why your toes won't move. Does this hurt?” She ran her finger over his sole.
“Tickles a bit.”
“And how about this?” She held his foot by the heel, grasped the big toe and wiggled it up and down, then side to side.
“It doesn’t feel real good, but it doesn’t hurt real bad either.”
“All right. And this?” She flexed his foot and he hissed in pain, his fingers clutching at the cushion of the chaise. “I’m sorry. Where did it hurt?”
He caught his breath with difficulty. “All the way up to my knee. Sort of a sharp pain, and now a pounding.”
“Well, young man,” Rebecca said, “it seems a good possibility you’ve broken a bone. I think the doctor should look at it. In the meantime, you should keep it packed in snow so it doesn’t swell any more.”
He made a face as the snow was piled up around his foot and his sister draped the towel over it.
“Keep it good and cold,” Rebecca advised Irene then turned back once again to her newest patient. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you wind up wearing a cast.”
“No kidding?” Jake asked. “I always wondered what that would feel like.”
“Be careful what you wish for.” Jesse passed the note to him with a sly smile.
As Brian left to fetch the doctor, Annie came back in. “Good news?” she asked.
“The best! Looks like I’m gonna be laid up for a while. And y’all be gettin’ to wait on me!”
“You just hold your breath!” Irene advised him, and flounced out again.
The woodsman helped Jesse up from the floor and settled her in beside Jake, while her dog curled up again at her feet. Then he and Annie took the chaise on the other side of the fireplace.
“How are you?” he murmured.
In answer, she rested her head against his shoulder. “Fine, now that you’re here.”
“Why is Jesse writing things down?”
Annie started to explain, but Daniel caught his younger brother’s words.
“... and when I tripped—”
“Jake,” he warned.
“But it’s just Jesse. She won't tell. Will you?”
Jesse’s eyes were big and bright as she shook her head and crossed her heart.
“All right,” Daniel said. “But no one—I repeat, no one—tells Mother a thing.”
“I won't,” breathed Jesse.
“I won't,” echoed Annie. “What happened? I know you didn’t tell us everything.”
“Well, like Jake said, he tripped. What he didn’t mention was that when he did, his rifle went off. Right into the side of the mountain. An avalanche started and we had to run like anything!
“Good thing we were on an open trail,” Daniel continued. “The snow started piling straight down the mountain, so we ran cross-wise away from it. The tail end of it caught us, though, and Jake fell and went tumbling on down. When I first looked, all I could see was the barrel of his rifle sticking up out of the snow. I was hoping he’d been able to hang on to it—lucky for him, he had.
“Also lucky that he was sitting upright when I found him, so I could clear his face right away. But by the time I dug him out, it was too late to get home.”
“So we stayed the night in this cave Daniel knew about,” Jake put in. “He built a fire, but it was still pretty cold. Then this morning, he packed me on home.”
“Packed you...” Jesse’s eyes grew even wider with the realization of the danger they’d been in. You could have been killed! she wrote.
“But we weren’t,” Jake said, “so there’s nothing to be scared about. Really, Jesse, everything turned out okay, didn’t it? Worst of it is, we lost the pronghorn!”
She sank against a pillow, scribbled on the pad. You’d better pray your mother never hears this, or she’ll never let you out of the house again!
“Aw, you won't tell her, will you?” he pleaded. “You promised!”
“Besides, it’s not the worst thing that ever happened,” Daniel put in. Annie moved in closer, but offered not a word of fear or reproach. “I remember this one time when me and Alec...”
***
JAKE’S WISH WAS GRANTED. The doctor diagnosed a broken ankle and wrapped it first in wool then in plaster of Paris up over his knee, and confined him to the house for three weeks. After examining Jesse, Barber prescribed the same confinement for her.
Brian went back to the canyon to see to the stock, and Rebecca went along to keep him company, flicking off Jesse’s sly suggestion that they needed a chaperone. Jesse and Adam settled into the guest room, and Daniel made Jake a pair of crutches so he could get downstairs in the morning on his own, though he’d need help in the evening to get up to bed. Jake thanked his father and brother heartily for installing the bathroom for his grandmother, sure that his life would have been miserable without it.
For the first week Jake was a model patient, obeying the doctor’s orders to the letter, drinking the comfrey root tea his mother prescribed, and reveling in the attention she lavished on him. But a love of confinement wasn’t in his nature and, by the tenth day, he was surly and short-tempered.
Bundled in a thick blue robe, Jesse sat next to him on the couch. He’d grown so much over the summer that, even though he slouched, her head barely came to his shoulder. Her cough was gone, but she was still weak and easily tired from her illness.
“What did I tell you? Be careful what you wish for—didn’t I say that? But noooo...” She saw a little smile beginning to form. “You had to ask for it. Well, now you’ve got it! And it ain’t as much fun as you thought, is it?”
“No. I didn’t know I’d have to drink that awful tea!”
“You should try some of the things they give me.”
“I guess I shouldn’t complain. But Jesse, don’t you ever feel like you’ve just gotta get out of here?”
“Yes,” she said, looking away from him. “Sometimes I just want to go home.” She turned back with a deliberate brightness on her face. “Here, why don’t we play checkers? That’ll be good for both of us.”
Jesse continued to put herself out to entertain him and at the end of the three weeks, the boyish adoration Jake had felt for her was gone, and he’d fallen deeply in love. He didn’t speak of it, but the change in him was noticed by his family. He’d always been a happy-go-lucky lad, and was still bright and optimistic. But he seemed older somehow, and quieter. The gangly clumsiness of youth was gone, and he deliberated before speaking. And when he’d healed enough to leave the house, he did so eagerly and yet sadly.
Jesse pulled her cloak around her shoulders and followed him out to the porch. The day, though cold, was bright and fresh, the breeze carrying the tang of cedars down from the mountains. Jake balanced on one crutch and leaned over to kiss her cheek.
“Thanks,” he said, “for everything.”
“You’re welcome, Jake,” she answered, then gave him a passable imitation of his father’s brogue, “What families are for.”
He had to laugh. He hobbled down the porch steps, turned at the bottom to wave up at her, then went to the barn to visit his young stallion.
***
ON THE MORNING AFTER Christmas, just before Adam took her home, Jake presented Jesse with the black filly he’d outgrown. As she stood next to Fancy, Jesse’s eyes sparkled with tears.
“Thank you,” she said with a quaver in her voice. “She’s such a beautiful little horse. I’ll take good care of her. And in the spring, I’ll be able to ride her.”
She took Jake’s hand and squeezed it while he turned crimson. He managed to bend and kiss her cheek with grace, before blurting out, “It’s because she’s just as pretty as you are.”
It was Jesse’s turn to blush, while Adam wrung his brother’s hand. In what seemed to be an imitation of Daniel’s voice, Adam growled, “Thanks, boy-o.” He tied the filly to the buggy then helped his wife in. Jake watched in happiness as she turned and waved her thanks again as they drove off.