Lena Carver, matched head to head with any trail-wise Cookie, and Wil’d put his money on her. If he had any.
As spirited a filly as he’d ever seen, she’d set him in his place twice that morning. And now she had him wearing a groove in fresh snow, riding herd around an old cabin not far from the house.
Four times he’d hobbled past a weathered marker that read Sir Humphrey.
This time, he jerked his chin at the gray board and fading letters. “Who’s Sir Humphrey?”
She looked to the marker, her meadow eyes soft, cheeks pink with the cold. “Our dog. When Tay and I were growing up, Sir Humphrey was our playmate and guardian all rolled into one big hairy ball.”
Her regard shifted back to the worn porch, straight peeled posts, and silvered logs of the cabin. Affection rested in her gaze.
“We lived in this cabin until I was about ten. Papa farmed. When the town grew out this way, he sold off some of the land. That money built the house and sent Tay to medical school.”
The dog had trotted behind on Wil’s first two circles. Now it sat on the narrow porch, watching as Wil stumped by. Blasted thing was laughing at him. He could see it in the glassy eye.
“Why didn’t you get another dog?”
“Why don’t you start a new path?” She shooed him away with her gloved hands. “You’re down to mud and making a mess of things.”
“This wasn’t my idea, you know.”
Exasperation puffed a white cloud from her rosy lips, and he worked himself over for thinking of Lena Carver in such colorful terms.
“Oh, all right,” she conceded. “You can work on climbing the front steps.”
He swung up onto the old porch next to his gray guardian. “How’s that, General Carver?”
Hands at her hips, she shook her head, discounting his levity. “I think not, Mr. Bergman.”
“We had a deal.”
“What deal?”
“Lengthy labor for my given name.”
Ignoring him, she headed for the house and slapped her skirt. “Come on. We’ll show Wil how it’s done.”
Confounded dog up and followed her.
Leaving him behind, they marched along the path he’d flattened, then cut through a swath of unmarred snow, Lena’s skirt lifted above her black boot tops.
He stopped halfway across. “You ever make angel pictures in the snow?”
She jarred to a standstill but didn’t turn around.
“I can show you how.”
The snow sparkled in the morning light, begging for someone to sweep three or four figures in the smooth, dry powder.
Lena hiked her skirt farther and ran around the front of the house, the dog close behind.
What had he said?
By the time he trudged to the porch, she was standing at the railing underneath a yellow-and-green sign hanging from two small chains: Dr. Taylor Carver, M.D. & Surgeon. Her arms were crossed high, both hands tucked under in opposition to the wide-open abandon required for flailing in the snow. Her face was just that white. Tight, and filled with pain.
“You all right?”
She nodded, but her lips rolled in and she wouldn’t look at him.
He knew enough about womenfolk to know he didn’t know enough. Nor did he have the right to pry into something she was hiding. Though he had to admit, he wanted to.
Three steps faced him, wide enough for two people to walk up side by side. He straightened, lifted the short crutches level with the bottom step, and followed with his right foot. The second step—thud-clomp—and the third, until he stood proudly on the porch. “Pretty good, don’t you think?”
Another nod but not a word. She stared out across the snowy field at something only she could see.
After circling the cabin for an hour and then swinging himself across the field and up the front steps, he wouldn’t have been able to fight his way out of a wet feed sack. But neither could he take her silence.
The sound of her voice had become what he wanted most to hear each morning. Sometimes he wondered how he’d lived nearly three decades without it.
Aching all the way from ankle to hip, he hopped to a rocker under the window, sank to it, and set his leg up on the porch swing.
If she got mad and gave him the boot, so be it. His question was worth a shot if it got her talking.
“I’m curious.” No apologizing—she’d made that clear as white vinegar. “Since you grew up here, seems natural that you and your brother would have played in the snow.” He would have if he’d not lived in more southern parts.
She didn’t make a sound, just kept staring across the field in front of the cabin.
He leaned forward to pet the dog when a breathy answer floated to his ear.
“We did.”
He’d nearly missed it.
“For a while, anyway. Until the Christmas I was four.” Her whisper faded against the squawking of a jay off in the pines.
He strained to hear more.
“That’s when I lost my fingers.”
Something hard and heavy landed in his stomach. More than likely, his brain. He should have kept his fool mouth shut.
More questions crowded up against his teeth like cattle bunching for a storm, but he refused to let ’em run.
She dropped her hands and her shoulders slumped, and he had the crazy urge to get up and wrap his arms around her. Shield her from the memories and the struggle. Her defeated posture pained him since he’d been the cause.
Desperate to cheer her, he changed his tact. “Where’d you come up with a name like Sir Humphrey?”
With a deep sigh, like she was letting go of a weighty load, she rested her gloved hands on the rail. “Sounds rather regal, doesn’t it?” She looked toward the cabin, giving him her profile. More regal than anything he’d seen between the Pecos and Wyoming.
“When he was a puppy, he’d curl up on the hearth with a humph. Sometimes he’d snort in his sleep. Papa thought it was a fitting name, considering the sounds he made.”
She turned then, her expressive eyes latching onto his leg. “You must be hurting after all that traipsing around.”
Her gaze met his briefly, then darted back to his cast. “I’ll get you some tea.”
As gently as he knew how, he reached for her right hand as she passed, expecting her to recoil from his touch.
She didn’t.
“No laudanum.”
She gave his hand a light squeeze before withdrawing her fingers. “No whiskey either.”
In the short while she was gone, he tried to come up with all the ways he could have met Lena Carver other than the way he did. Every one of them involved blood or broken bones. Unless she went to church socials and such, which he hadn’t had occasion to attend in some time.
Looked like pain was the only way he’d have found her.
A new habit of fingering the crease above his ear found his hair longer and in need of a trim. Further investigation along his jaw line confirmed that he was hairing up for a hard winter.
He hadn’t let Cookie barber him like some of the boys did, so he was shaggy enough before he’d been ambushed. Being laid up here merely added to the problem. All the trouble with his leg had left him forgetful of how the rest of him appeared.
It was a wonder Lena Carver talked to him at all.
~
Lena stared into her cup, watching the level rise as she poured black tea, grateful she’d pulled herself out of shock over Wil’s unexpected question about playing in the snow. The man was certainly full of surprises.
His simple query had stopped not only her feet, but her heart and her brain as well. She hadn’t been able to think. Hadn’t been able to catch her breath. It was a child’s game he spoke of. Not one for a grown, mature woman.
Adults did not lie in the snow waving their arms and legs, but clearly, Wil Bergman did not know that.
She hadn’t done it in twenty years.
Rousing her wits from such woolgathering, she returned to the porch with a tray and tea service and set it on a small table by the rocker. A teapot, two cups and saucers, sugar and cream, spoons, and a soup bone cluttered the surface.
Afraid to find his dark eyes bearing into her, she tossed the bone to his dog, who caught it in midair. No surprise there, for the dog watched her every move.
“Here you are.” After offering Wil the empty cup and saucer, she poured in yellow tea. “Chamomile with a bit of willow bark. You should feel better soon.”
He leaned forward, peering into her cup. “What are you drinking?”
“It’s not Kessler’s best, I can tell you that.”
He snorted. “I’d have smelled it if it was.” He cocked his head toward the dog. “Same way he smelled that soup bone.”
The big dog propped the bone between both front paws as it gnawed, all the while watching Lena take a careful seat on the swing.
Wil lowered his foot to the porch, and she grabbed his trouser leg. “You’ll do no such thing. We won’t be here long, it’ll get too cold. But if you want to wait out here for Tay, you’ll be halfway to the livery when he gets back.”
Puzzlement knit his brows until he followed her line of sight to the barn roof rising above a row of trees not a half mile from the house. Bold white letters painted across the dark wood were easily distinguishable: Bergman’s Livery.
Clearly not amused, he scowled more deeply over his pale brew. “I thought your brother said it was a ways off.”
“He said it was farther than you thought.”
Sipping her tea, she studied him. “You seem the type to take off on your own if given half the chance.”
If she wasn’t on her toes, he’d hoodwink her again, like he had over the butter churn. He’d been anything but a novice and had probably helped his mother when he was a boy.
At the thought of toes, she considered his left foot, pointing skyward and propped beside her on the swing. She had worried that three wool socks were not enough to keep his foot from freezing. But he hadn’t uttered a complaint. Getting out of the house was more than likely enough for someone like him. Someone who’d clearly spent most of his time outdoors, from the way he looked—and in a saddle, from the way he talked.
The best she could put together was that he’d been shot at, dragged, and robbed.
He remembered none of it.
“Did your brother set my leg by himself?” He tried his tea and grimaced.
“Of course not. Winnie helped.”
That set him back. “Winnie?”
Teacup in hand, she was tempted to draw him into a ruse, but thought better of it. He could reach her with one of those crutches.
“Winnie is our buggy mare.”
Better than a ruse. He choked on his chamomile and nearly spilled the entire cup.
For a man who had obviously traveled dustier trails than she, he was much too easy to tease. Choosing her words carefully, she explained their unconventional yet successful method of setting his bones end to end.
He studied her for a long minute. “You ride?”
Not a comment she had anticipated. “Why do you ask?”
“If you did, you’d make a hard-driving trail boss, is all I can say.”
He smiled in a chuckling sort of way, and in spite of his grizzled beard and unshorn hair, she impulsively returned the gesture.
If she wasn’t careful, she’d lose all of her composure.
Sleigh bells rang from behind a wooded patch, growing louder until Winnie herself trotted into view. Tay turned in next to the house, his breath rising in a cloud like the mare’s. He jumped down, gloved and bundled, and ran his hand over Winnie’s thick winter coat as he walked round.
At the bottom of the steps, he stomped off his boots, then joined Lena on the swing. The only man she knew who voluntarily attached sleigh bells to his buggy every November. Of course, he did it for her. She had loved their sound as a child.
Tay baited their guest. “You sure you want to do this?”
Suddenly Lena saw her brother’s order of morning exercise for what it was—an effort to wear the patient down and send him to bed.
She stood and reached for the tray. “Dinner will be on the table in ten minutes. Plenty of time for you both to wash up.”