CHAPTER 16
Luke balanced himself on the crutches, reached into the bag he held, and slung grain onto the ground for the chickens clustering around him. The fowl went after the stuff with their usual frenzied enthusiasm.
He draped the bag’s strap over his shoulder, got a good grip on the crutch handles so he could turn himself around, and stumped back toward the cabin.
Emily came out onto the porch before he got there. “I was gonna feed the chickens,” she told him with a grin.
“No need,” Luke said. “I took care of it.”
“There’s just no stoppin’ you, is there?”
“Not when it’s something I can do.” He changed course, angling toward the side of the house where the big stump they used for splitting firewood stood. The ax leaned against the stump, handle up.
“What are you fixin’ to do now?” Emily asked.
“You said you needed some wood for the stove,” Luke explained.
“I didn’t say you had to split it!”
“I don’t mind.” He reached the stump and propped the right-hand crutch against it. With only a small amount of awkwardness, he picked up a piece of wood from the pile beside the stump and set it upright in the middle. Then he took hold of the ax and lifted it one-handed.
“You’re gonna miss and cut your leg off one of these days,” Emily warned.
“No great loss,” Luke said.
“Unless you bleed to death!”
Luke swung the ax above his head and brought it down in a precise stroke, splitting the cordwood perfectly down the middle. He used the ax to brush the two pieces off the stump, leaned the ax against it, and picked up another piece of wood to split.
Emily blew out her breath and shook her head in exasperation. “You are the most stubborn man I ever saw, Luke Jensen.”
And that was a good thing, Luke thought, otherwise he’d probably be dead. The wound he had suffered a few months earlier would have killed him.
The late summer sun blazed down, and it didn’t take Luke long to work up a sweat. His damp linsey-woolsey shirt clung to his back. He lifted his arm and sleeved beads of perspiration off his face.
When he’d first started shaving himself again, rather than relying on Emily to do it, he’d been shocked at the gaunt, haggard face looking out at him from the mirror. That man looked at least ten years older than he really was, Luke thought.
Since then his features had begun to fill out some, and he thought he looked more like himself. Most of the time, the strain of what he had gone through painted a rather grim expression on his face. When he laughed, though, he didn’t feel quite as ugly. Still ugly, mind you, he told himself, just not as much.
Recently he had stopped shaving his upper lip and let his mustache grow. It gave him a certain amount of dignity, in his opinion, and Emily didn’t seem to mind. How she thought about things had taken on a lot of importance during the months he had spent on the Peabody farm.
She came down from the porch to gather up the chunks of wood he had split. “Breakfast is ready. Come on inside and eat.”
She didn’t have to tell him twice, and she didn’t have to help him up the steps. He made it just fine with the crutches.
He had carved them himself, putting quite a bit of time and effort into it. He’d wanted the crutches to be as comfortable as possible, since it looked like he’d be using them for quite a while. Some of the feeling had started to come back into his legs, enough that he could get around a little with the help of the crutches, but he was still pretty helpless. He didn’t let himself think too much about how long that might go on. He still held out hope that one day his legs would work again, the way they were supposed to.
Because of that, he’d asked Emily to help him exercise the muscles in them. He knew it wasn’t fair to place that extra burden on her, but she didn’t object. He had seen what happened to Clyde Monroe back home. Doing nothing after his injury had made him worse. Luke wasn’t going to give up like that ... which led right back to that stubbornness Emily had accused him of.
He fed the chickens and gathered eggs and split wood and hoed the vegetable garden and shucked corn. Anything he could do sitting down or balanced on one crutch, he would do. The work put thick slabs of muscle back on his arms and shoulders and back.
He was damned if he was going to be useless. He would die first.
Emily and her grandfather had both asked him if he wanted to send a letter to his family back in Missouri letting them know he was alive. Luke only had to think about it for a second before he shook his head.
After failing the Confederacy and his friends, he didn’t want his pa and Kirby finding out about that. One day, if what he planned came about, he would return home, but not until he had done the job he had set out for himself.
Once his legs worked right again, he was going to track down Potter, Stratton, Richards, and Casey and kill each and every one of them. He knew he probably wouldn’t be able to recover the gold they had stolen—there was no Confederacy to return it to, anyway—but at least he could even the score for what they had done to Remy, Dale, and Edgar.
And to him.
Then and only then, when he had reclaimed at least a vestige of his honor, would he return to his family. Until then it was better to let them think he was dead, even though they would mourn him.
It had to be that way. On his darkest nights, he admitted to himself there was a very strong possibility he would never walk normally again, no matter how much he tried. In that case, he would live out his life on the Peabody farm, unless Emily and her grandfather kicked him out.
The way he and Emily had started to feel about each other, he didn’t think that was likely.
And yet that thought tortured him, too. Emily might be falling in love with him—Lord knew he’d been in love with her pretty much from the moment he first saw her and mistook her for an angel—but was it fair for him to saddle her with a cripple for a husband? He wasn’t even sure he could be a real husband to her, although lately he’d begun to feel some stirrings that told him it might be possible.
Feeling anything below the level of the wound in his back was a good sign. The bullet wound was completely healed. A pale, ragged scar was the only sign of it that remained. Luke hadn’t seen the scar himself, of course, but Emily had described it for him. He could move around now without feeling even a twinge in his back.
He clumped over to the table Emily had set for three people. Setting one of the crutches aside, he gripped his chair and lowered himself into it.
Emily poured coffee for him and set a plate of flapjacks, bacon, and eggs in front of him. They ate fairly well, because the Peabody farm had escaped most of the damage and destruction inflicted by the Yankees when they rampaged through the area a year earlier.
As she sat down opposite Luke, Emily said, “Grampaw told me he’s goin’ to town today, if you need anything.”
The settlement of Dobieville was about five miles down the road. A trading post was closer to the farm, but Linus Peabody refused to do any business there since a Yankee carpetbagger had taken it over a month earlier when the previous owner had been unable to pay his taxes.
Luke shook his head. “I can’t think of anything. Unless he can pick me up a new pair of legs.”
Emily frowned across the table at him. “I thought you promised to stop sayin’ things like that.”
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“I know you think you got to walk again, Luke, and I don’t blame you for feelin’ that way, I really don’t. But you don’t have to. Not . . . not for me, anyway. It ain’t gonna change the way I feel about you.”
Suddenly the food in front of him didn’t seem so appetizing. He didn’t want to have this discussion. Of course, it was his own fault for bringing it up.
He looked at the plate. “We don’t need to talk about this. It won’t change anything, anyway.”
His voice sounded harsher than he intended. He didn’t look up at Emily, afraid he would see hurt in her eyes.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s just eat.”
Linus Peabody came in a few minutes later. He’d been in the barn, tending to the mules, the milk cow, and the hogs. If he sensed the tension between Luke and Emily, he had the good sense not to say anything about it as he sat down. “Did Emily tell you I’m goin’ to town this mornin’, Luke?”
“She did, but there’s nothing I need right now.”
“I was thinkin’ you might want to go with me.”
Luke frowned in surprise. “To Dobieville?”
“Yep. Actually, I thought we might all go. Been stuck here on this farm all summer.”
Luke glanced at Emily and caught a glimpse of excitement on her face.
She hurriedly covered it up. “I don’t need nothin’ in town, Grampaw.”
“Yes, you do. You need to see somebody ’sides a pair of ugly ol’ galoots like me and Luke.”
“Neither of you is ugly,” she protested.
“There’s no point in arguing with the facts,” Luke said with a smile. “Neither of us is going to win any prizes for being good-looking, are we, Linus?”
The old-timer cackled. “The judges’d have to be plumb blind if we did!” Peabody nodded. “So it’s settled. After we eat, we’ll all load up in the wagon and head for town.”