She'd let herself drift to sleep without thinking about what he'd said, and she'd awakened nestled within Dave's protective hold, never wanting to move.
It wasn't any of the things she'd offered as explanation for what happened between the two of them. It was them. But there was still a canyon between that and Dave's certainty.
Makes things simple. We stay together.
It didn't feel simple to her. That's what she needed to sort out.
Because she'd jumped into this. Just like Dave said about her. She'd jumped into a new life when he'd broken up with her all those years ago. She'd jumped into coming back to the ranch when Great-Uncle Henry died, leaving her new life behind. She'd jumped into asking Dave to be her husband when she'd come up against a problem.
Her husband.
Only, not really her husband, no matter what he said.
The man she'd always loved.
Always? Still?
She had to think about this. Think it through before she took another step–a mis-step. This was too big to do any more jumping.
Only she couldn't think lying next to Dave, with the sound of his breathing in her ear and the rise and fall of his chest under her hand. Especially not this sort of thinking.
Easing away from him was one of the hardest things she'd ever done. Not because she was trying to make no noise that would wake him, but because of the voice inside her screaming to lie down beside him again and feel his arms around her for as long as she possibly could.
The jangle of Juno's harness brought Matty's attention back to the present. They'd almost reached the end of the section of trail she and Dave had named The Narrows–a high and tight path between two outcroppings of rock that let only one horse at a time pass through. She heard hoofs coming fast behind her.
Dave. It had to be.
No one else would be taking this trail at dawn, especially not at that speed. No one else would have reason to follow her. No one else would have reason to call her to account.
Her leg muscles tensed in preparation for tapping her heels against Juno's sides, signaling the responsive mare to move faster. But she stopped herself. Better to face it now. Better to own up to jumping in head-first–again–and go from there.
She let Juno keep going the few yards to where the path opened up beyond The Narrows, then turned her around, facing the way they'd come, and waited.
She'd barely brought Juno to a stop when she heard a horse's frightened cry, then what sounded like metal against rock, followed by a faint, dull thud. She hadn't even sorted out the sounds, much less consciously ascribed meanings to them before she tapped Juno's sides and urged her forward, toward the sounds.
Almost as soon as she started, she stopped. Responding to more sounds, she pulled back hard on Juno's reins, and wheeled the mare across the opening of The Narrows. In another second, Brandeis came charging out of the shadows toward them. Riderless.
Not letting herself think about that, Matty angled Juno so she partially blocked Brandeis' outlet, but not completely, so he wouldn't panic more. He took the opening she left him, toward the fence that paralleled the trail here. Keeping Juno half a body ahead of him, she steered him along the fence, talking to him all the while. She slowed Juno, and to her relief, the powerful stallion also slowed.
Knowing an abrupt move now could send the stallion into a frenzy, she forced herself to reach slowly for the reins. Brandeis shook his head, but didn't pull away or rear. It seemed like an eternity before she had the two horses headed back into The Narrows, but it couldn't have been more than three or four minutes altogether since Brandeis had appeared.
"Dave?" she called. Not too loud, for fear of Brandeis bolting again, but loud enough for someone to hear. No answer.
"Dave?!"
Nothing.
Her heart lurched painfully against her chest. Her eyes strained into the murky light as they followed a curve around a huge boulder that blocked the trail ahead from view.
She saw the patch of red first, and heard herself whispering, "Please, please."
It was all she could get out in the way of a prayer. But as she drew closer, it seemed to be answered as she realized the color was from Dave's shirt, not something else.
"Dave!"
Still no answer. She dismounted some distance away, near a scrub pine growing out of the rock where she could loop both horses' reins. It wouldn't hold either one if they pulled hard, but it was better than nothing. And the first rule in an emergency was to not be left afoot. Ed Currick had taught her and Dave that so many years ago.
"Please," she whispered again, as she hurried toward the figure awkwardly sprawled on the ground. There was more red. Blood. In his hair and down the side of his face. "Oh, Dave."
He groaned, and she had never heard anything so wonderful in her life. She dropped to her knees beside him as his eyes fluttered open. His mouth moved once with no sound. It took a second time before words came.
"Matty. You okay?"
"Am I okay? You're the one who's hurt! What happened? No–First, tell me where you hurt."
He blinked, and winced as if that motion hurt. "Brandeis...?"
"Is fine. Now, will you tell where you're hurt?"
"I'm all right."
He started to move, as if to sit up. She pressed his shoulder to the ground. With a moan, he subsided, closing his eyes, and she wasn't sure if it was her hold or pain that kept him still.
"Right. You're just fine," she said aloud. Inside, she was uttering incoherent prayers of thanks that he was moving and talking.
Now she had to know how badly he was hurt.
Keeping her touch as gentle as she could, and thankful the light was growing stronger, she followed the path of blood back, parting his hair to find a gash in his scalp. Although it was still bleeding steadily, it didn't look too deep. With her own blood pounding in her ears, she placed her fingertips on his wrist and felt the strong, solid pulse there.
The bump on his head was bad enough for a concussion, but the light wasn't good enough to compare the size of his pupils. His talking and making sense were both good signs, though.
She allowed herself an exhalation of relief, then wiped her bloody fingers on the scrub grass before methodically running her hands over his body, testing for broken bones the way she would with a calf or a colt. It wasn't scientific, but she figured it was the same principle.
By the time she reached his boots, she was satisfied he had no major fractures, though she couldn't speak to smaller bones–or internal injuries. To check that out, she needed to get him to a doctor, and to do that, she would need help.
"Dave?"
His eyes were closed and for a heartbeat she thought he'd lost consciousness again, then came a low, "Huh?"
"Don't go to sleep. You might have a concussion, and I don't think you're supposed to sleep."
"Uh-huh."
The vagueness of that answer made one decision for her. She wasn't going to leave him long enough to ride for help. She'd have to get help some other way.
"Dave. I'm going to the horses. I want you to stay awake. You understand?"
Another grunt.
"That's not good enough, Dave." She forced her voice to stay calm and even. "Answer me, so I know you understand."
"I understand."
"Good."
First, she checked Brandeis, making sure he was sound–in case she had to ride him after all. Next, she took everything she thought might be useful out of the pack she kept behind Juno's saddle. There wasn't much since she'd only been riding back and forth between the ranches. She'd hoped for a paper and pencil, but no such luck.
Instead, she tied her red bandanna around the saddlehorn, freed Juno's reins, turned her toward the Flying W, slapped her on the rump, and hoped like the dickens that Juno would do what Matty expected her to do, that Cal wouldn't have left the home ranch yet, and that he would understand the message.
It was a lot of hoping.
She wasn't prepared to leave
it to hope. So if Cal hadn't shown up after an hour, she would light a signal fire up on top of the rock outcropping. Surely someone would see that.
She raided Brandeis' pack next and found a first aid kit–count on Dave to be prepared–and brought her booty to where Dave was, she used the first-aid kit and a bandanna dipped in the creek along the fence line to wipe the blood from his face, and the worst of it out of his hair. More oozed sluggishly from the cut. She kept reminding herself that head wounds bled worse than others. Drawing the split skin together, she used three butterfly bandages, but suspected he'd need stitches.
"Dave, you want some water?"
He'd said nothing while she'd worked and most of the time he'd kept his eyes closed, but she'd known he was conscious from the movement of his eyes beneath the lids.
"Yeah."
With the sky brightening quickly now, she put one arm under his head to raise it enough for him to drink, and he tried to keep going, so she used the other hand to press down on his chest.
"I can sit."
"No. Just lie still. I think you've got some injured ribs–broken or maybe cracked, but either way they've got to be hurting."
He started to protest again but she put the mouth of the water bottle to his lips, and his choice was to waste good water by letting it dribble down his chin or to drink. He drank–even banged up, Dave was too levelheaded to waste water.
She'd told him about setting Juno loose–hopefully to return to the Flying W barn. Now she informed him, "I'm going to gather makings for a signal fire in case we need it."
She worked fast, not wanting to leave him alone, so only a few minutes passed before she rounded the big boulder once more, and saw the stubborn fool struggling to sit up, trying to use his heel for purchase in the thin, rocky soil. She dropped the armload of fire-makings at one side of the trail and hurried forward.
"Stay still!"
Something more persuasive than her entered the picture–pain. He gave a sharp grunt that faded into a groan, and dropped back to one elbow.
"Is it your ankle?"
"Leg." His lips were thinned. "I think. Hard to tell."
She crouched beside him, and pulled the bottom of his jeans up as high as she could, then gently slid her hands inside them to skim over his flesh. The wiry hair there prickled her palms, but the bones beneath seemed solid and in place.
"Your leg seems fine," she said, drawing her palms slowly down his shin. She looked up at him. "Maybe it's–what?" His face had gone tense and he was breathing harder. "Is there pain?"
"Not my leg now."
"But you said–"
"Higher, Matty."
"Higher? But–" And then, crouched there on the ground, with her hands cupped around the tough muscles of his calf, she recognized the part of his anatomy his look was indicating, and she saw that part of him was indeed swollen.
And it made no difference that she needed to think things through. It made no difference how much had changed between them and what might never have been right. It made no difference that he'd been thrown and she didn't know how badly hurt he was. She felt the corresponding reaction surge hot and powerful into her.
"Matty, if you regret making love–"
"No." The word came out stark and louder than she'd expected."No, I don't regret making love with you, Dave."
"Good, because I'm not dead yet, Matty," he said in the closest thing to his Dave drawl he'd managed since the fall.
"Oh, for heaven's sake." Angry at herself, terrified for him, she snatched her hands away, taking the hem of his jeans and jerking them back down over the top of his boot, and slapping them there–and nearly jumped out of her skin at his yowl of pain.
"Oh, God, I'm sorry, Dave. I didn't mean to hurt your ankle."
"Foot," he gasped.
But she was looking more closely at his boots, comparing the two of them. "I don't think so, Dave. It looks like your ankle's starting to swell some even with your boot on. I can't be certain without taking the boot off, but if it is your ankle... No, I'm leaving the boot on until the doctor can see you."
"Don't need a doctor."
"Right." She might have had more to say on that subject as well as the general topic of stubborn males, but she heard hoofbeats, even before Brandeis nickered. "Dave, I think it's Cal. I'll be right back."
She went to Brandeis, holding his reins so he wouldn't decide the newcomer's arrival was an excuse to run.
Cal rode in on Reve, leading Juno, his rifle crooked in his arm. He looked decidedly grim in the instant before he spotted her.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine, Cal. But Dave got thrown."
"Is he–?"
"Bad bump on the head, and a cut. Ankle's swelling, could be broken. But his pulse is good. He's moving, talking. He's groggy, but making sense."
"When Juno came back to the barn with it barely light... What the hell happened?" He was already dismounting.
"Brandeis must have thrown him. You know how stallions can be."
"Looks calm now."
"Even the calmest horse can get rattled."
He slid her a look. "Even riding before daylight, I've never heard of Currick getting thrown by anything on four legs."
Neither had she. Not since they were kids.
Except even the calmest man could get rattled, too. And maybe he'd been rattled, just the way she'd been.
"Not that you owe me any explanation, Matty." He looped the reins around the same scrub pine, and slid the rifle into a holder on the saddle.
"He was coming after me. We had a...fight." It was the fastest way to explain what had happened. Cal gave her a long look.
"Where is he?"
"This way."
The stubborn fool had himself half propped up against the rock wall of The Narrows. Drag marks in the dirt showed part of his struggle. The grayness under his tan showed more.
Matty glared at him, which did no good since his eyes were closed.
"You want to stay with him while I get a doctor out here?" Cal asked.
If Dave was seriously injured he shouldn't be moved–but of course he'd been moving himself so it was a little late for that. Even more, Matty was sure she'd have sensed if he was more seriously hurt than he appeared to be.
"No. We'll take him back to the Flying W. Then we can call–"
"Slash-C."
She and Cal turned in unison to Dave. He sounded almost completely like himself, except his voice was roughened by pain.
"We're on Flying W land," Matty started reasonably. "So it's shorter to–"
"Home."
"Flying W's closer," Cal backed her up.
"Home."
Cal stared at Dave another two beats, then turned to her with a lift of one brow.
The Flying W was closer. Dave would get medical attention quicker by taking him there. She looked into his face again. There was more to healing than medicine.
"Slash-C." She said it once to Dave, then turned to Cal and repeated, "Slash-C."
Cal dipped his head in acceptance. "Okay, how're we gonna get him there?"
"I can ride," Dave said.
"You are not riding."
"I can ride," he repeated stubbornly.
"Maybe," Cal interrupted calmly. "But how're you going to get in the saddle with that ankle?"
That stopped Dave, though he did mutter "Foot" under his breath.
"He'll ride double behind me," she decided. "On Brandeis. He can carry double riders better than Juno."
Cal frowned. "If Currick passes out and starts to slip–"
"I can ride alone."
She ignored Dave. "You can ride along next to us, Cal. Besides, I'll need you to help get him up. I couldn't get him up behind you."
"Okay."
They brought the horses out of The Narrows first. Getting Dave upright was tricky in the confined area. Cal couldn't get in position to get his shoulder under Dave's arm, so the two of them could only tug on him and help him balance as he used his upper
body to grab hold of the sharp rock face. Each grunt of pain was like a blow to her, and the perspiration on his forehead made her want to cry.
It was even worse getting him up on Brandeis, because all she could do was sit in the saddle, keep the horse steady and try to be something stable for him to grab on to as Cal boosted him up. He didn't make a sound through that whole maneuver, but she heard his hiss of pain as he finally settled against her back, with his arms around her waist.
"Lean on me, Dave," she ordered, when Cal left them to mount up.
"I'm okay." But she could tell from his voice how much getting on Brandeis had taken out of him, and that frightened her.
"You're stubborn as a jackass."
"Don't knock it. It's the only way I've been able to stay in love with you all these years, Matty."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was a hellish trip back.
They had to take it slow, yet she knew that each minute was delaying the time Dave could get relief for his pain.
And what if he had more serious injuries than she'd thought. Maybe she should have insisted he stay up in The Narrows until they could get the doctor to him. Maybe she shouldn't have agreed to bring him the longer distance to the Slash-C.
Dave didn't speak until they'd dropped down from the higher ground of The Narrows to where the first true sunlight glinted on blooming wildflowers.
"Indian Paintbrush," he said quite clearly from behind her.
Its vivid red was among the blooms, but why would he bring it up? Could he be delirious? "What about it, Dave?"
"Reminds me of you."
She couldn't twist around enough to see him and had to be satisfied with looking to Cal, riding beside them. He gave a faint shrug, which he wouldn't have done if he thought Dave was raving.
Still, when she caught sight of the roof of the barn ahead she thought she'd never seen such a beautiful sight.
"Cal, ride ahead and see if Jack or any of the other hands are around to help."
"You sure you'll be okay?"
"I'm not going to fall off, dammit." The grumble was the first thing Dave had said since the comment about Indian Paintbrush. She'd known he was conscious, though, by his hold around her waist.
"Yes," she assured Cal. "Go on. And if you find someone to come back and help, go inside and call Doc Johnson in Knighton."
Cal spurred Reve into the placid canter that was his top speed these days.
It seemed interminable, but it couldn't have been more than ten minutes after Cal had gone out of sight before she saw two riders heading toward them. Amid a flurry of questions Jack and young Bryan came up on either side of Brandeis, and Matty felt immeasurably relieved to have flank riders for the last stretch.