Her Abundant Joy Page 3

  Carson turned to find the owner of the warehouse at his elbow. “These people are leaving, then?” the man asked.

  “Yes, and they will send for what they’ve left behind. If the money runs out, just put it on their tab.” Carson shook his hand.

  “Godspeed,” the man said, nodding. “You’ll need all the help you can get leading a bunch of greenhorns to the Hill Country.”

  Carson swung up into his saddle. “No doubt. Adios.” He turned back and looked over the crowd, his eye straying to the frail blond. Did she have the grit to last on the frontier?

  Dusk finally came. Mariel’s every bone ached from the day’s walking. And after being soaked fording a stream, her flesh was chilled. Still, she forced herself to help her mistress settle onto a fallen log. Suffering a difficult pregnancy, Frau Heller needed her more and more and was grateful for any small kindness. Mariel took her place behind the Frau, leaning against a tree. The Ranger called out, “Women and children, gather moss from the trees, and twigs and sticks for a fire! Men, come help put up the tent and cut wood!”

  Petrified in her fatigue, Mariel watched as others began moving around doing what he’d ordered. She tried to marshal her strength to join them and failed. It suddenly occurred to her that this was her first night in the wilderness. She looked up through the tree boughs to the clouds that scudded overhead. I am here. I am in Texas, far from civilization. The thought tried to overwhelm her.

  Herr Heller took her by surprise. From behind, he touched her in that nasty way that made her feel dirty. She fled the few feet to his wife and sat down on the log beside her. This insulting behavior had begun when they’d landed in Galveston. Before that he had only been overbearing and ill-tempered. “Stupid girl!” her master shouted. “Go gather twigs like the American said!”

  Mariel jumped up, her face burning from both the assault on her person and his shouting. She didn’t want to make a scene and embarrass his wife, a poor woman who had enough to deal with already. There had to be some way to get out of this situation before reaching their land. Maybe she would be able to find other employment with another family or somehow set up her own business, perhaps sewing.

  Fear had broken her stupor. She began gathering twigs and downed branches. The Ranger, with the help of several men, was stretching the large canvas over the boughs of an ancient spreading oak and then, with pegs and a hammer, fastening it to the ground on one side. The canvas would be both roof and a windbreak.

  The other American was chopping down a tree outside of camp with amazing speed. In a practiced rhythm, his ax caught the wood. Chunk…Chunk… The tree gave way with a crash. The other men bent into the work of chopping the felled trunk into logs for the fire.

  Some of the men had started a bonfire just beyond the spreading oak tree that provided the structure for their canvas “inn.” Despite the weary camaraderie of her companions, Mariel’s heart ached. The numbness that Herr Heller’s unwanted touch always summoned was claiming her. She blinked away the tears that threatened to come as she fought to hold onto herself. She would not become deadened, frozen again.

  I am a Texas woman now. I will be free of Herr Heller. Soon. I’ll find a way.

  That thought stopped the creeping numbness. Gave her hope. Things would turn out differently here if only she clung to that belief. She just had to hold on. She had come to Texas to get away from the past, but now she realized that she might find more than a haven here. If Texas had men like this Ranger, perhaps she would find that she had a future here with a man who would love her and give her children to love. It was a dangerous temptation to hope.

  Riding her horse beside the buckboard, Sugar Quinn wondered for the thousandth time why she hadn’t refused to go with the family to east Texas for the wedding. Behind the buckboard rode Emilio Ramirez, the only person who made the trip bearable for her. And he had suffered for it. Why couldn’t she let him know how much that meant to her?

  Sugar forced herself to look straight ahead rather than repeatedly glancing back at Emilio. If only it was easy for her to speak, to let him know how much it meant to her that for her sake, he’d endured slurs and insults with unmatched aplomb.

  Little Erin, who was sitting behind Sugar’s saddle, said without preamble, “I can’t stand Cousin Blanche. Why did that nice man marry her? Why would anyone marry her? She’s so mean.”

  Sugar sighed with envy. Her ten-year-old sister could put into words what Sugar could only think.

  “Erin,” Dorritt said, “you are of course entitled to your opinion of people. But I hope you will not say anything like that about any person except in the privacy of your family’s bosom.”

  “Yes, Mama, I know that, but why does she act so…” The little girl with two braids the color of her father’s dark hair seemed unable to find a word to describe her cousin’s behavior.

  Sugar didn’t have the same problem. Erin’s cousin, Blanche LaCroix, was spoiled and demanding and had a nasty tongue. And worse yet, Blanche reserved her nasty tongue for servants and unimportant relatives like her disreputable shirttail family from west Texas. And Tejanos like Emilio, who was a Texian of Mexican descent. Anyone with darker skin.

  To other whites, Blanche was sweet as…sugar.

  Sugar wrinkled her nose. She hated that phrase—even when people used it as a compliment. To her, it was a painful scar. She was called Sugar because no one knew her real name, not even she. She shook off the persistent feeling of not being real because she had no past. Instead she let herself savor the memory of the very first time she had seen the Quinn Ranch and Emilio. He was the son of the foreman at the nearby Rancho Sandoval. Emilio had been the first to run out to greet her. She’d only been around seven and he had been nearly a man, twice her age. He had seemed so big to her, so kind. Sugar had been entranced by his welcoming smile and the way he had softened his voice to speak to her, and how it had felt when he’d so gently swung her down from behind Carson’s saddle.

  “I don’t know why we even had to go to this stupid wedding,” Erin grumbled, interrupting Sugar’s happy turn of thought.

  “Family is family,” their father, Quinn, spoke up. “While your Grandmother Kilbride lives, we will visit the plantation.”

  Sugar picked up on the reverse truth—that they would cease visiting once Dorritt’s mother was dead. Sugar sensed Emilio riding up closer behind her. Emilio had always made her feel special, from helping her make a piñata for her first birthday as a Quinn, to later, when she’d been eleven, letting him teach her how to dance the fandango, and he’d teased and chuckled throughout the lessons. Two years ago, when she’d donned her first grown-up dress and put up her hair, she had savored the way he had looked at her. Ever since then, he’d treated her like a lady, one he admired, no longer as a little girl. Emilio Ramirez was one of the finest gentlemen she knew.

  “Señorita Sugar,” Emilio said, “your horse is starting to limp.”

  Although the sound of his voice rippled through Sugar like warm water, his words chilled her. Today they should reach Montezuma, where they’d meet up with Carson and then head home. She didn’t want anything to hold them up. She pulled on her reins, halting the horse. Guilt stung her. Why hadn’t she noticed her horse was limping?

  She slid from her saddle and helped Erin climb down. The buckboard drew to a halt. As Quinn and Emilio examined the horse’s hoof, Sugar stood to the side, watching, listening. The two men decided it must be merely a stone bruise. The horse would need rest and shoeing in Montezuma. If there wasn’t a farrier there, perhaps they’d find one in Gonzales.

  “Well, Sugar, you won’t be riding any longer,” her father said. “We need to let him walk without any weight.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have…” Her voice failed her—not because she was afraid of being scolded but because Emilio had looked up and smiled at her. She wanted to smile in return, to speak. But she was unable to make her mouth work as it should.

  She wished Carson had been there. When Carson was
near, she could speak…a little. And she was never happy to be away from the Quinn Ranch or Rancho Sandoval if Carson wasn’t with them. Somehow, even after ten years had passed, Carson had always been the one who’d made Sugar feel safe. But Emilio had always been there too, helping her learn Spanish, teaching her how to ride, making her feel as if she mattered. And, in the past two years, gazing at her as if he thought her pretty, special. Tonight they would meet up with Carson in Montezuma and maybe he could help her, teach her how to speak of love to Emilio—

  Her heart stuttered just like her contrary tongue, which could never voice her feelings. How could she be so unfeeling as to speak of her love for Emilio after the humiliation Carson had suffered at Blanche’s hands?

  Three days after leaving Galveston, Carson glanced around the party. The sun was lower in the western sky. Without the party he was leading, he’d already have arrived at Montezuma. But he was a Ranger, and it was his duty to take care of the people of Texas. At least, that’s the way it had been. How would this change when the annexation actually took effect?

  Tunney was riding in the rear as usual while Carson led. Carson itched to be at Montezuma. Actually, he longed to ride up to the sprawling hacienda where he’d been raised. Maybe now that Texas was a U.S. state, he’d be able to quit the Rangers, settle down, stay home, and be a help to his father. Quinn would never admit it, but he was nearing his fifties, and he didn’t have the strength he’d had when Carson was a boy. Still, Quinn was stronger than most men—

  A child screamed.

  Three

  Carson whirled his mount around. Galloped toward the continued screeching. Ahead, he glimpsed people clumping together. “Let me through!” he shouted, his heart pounding in his ears. He slid from his saddle. He pushed his way through the gathering. Tunney was right behind him.

  “Hilf mir! Hilf mir!” a wild-eyed woman shouted as she hugged a wailing, weeping child to her.

  Carson saw at once what had happened. A snake with its head cut off lay at the child’s feet. A foot-long copperhead. He cursed under his breath. “Where was the child bit?” he shouted. When no one answered, he jerked the child from the mother’s arms. “Where—”

  “His finger!” Mariel the frail blond called out, crouching beside the mother. “His little finger!”

  Carson grabbed the child’s ankles and swung him upside down. Without a word spoken, Tunney snapped off a string of leather from his shirt. He tied it as a tourniquet around the finger with the bleeding snake bite. Then, with a quick stroke of his Bowie knife, he sliced off the finger.

  The mother fainted. Shouting curses in German, the furious father caught her. That alone evidently stopped him from attacking Carson.

  The crowd roared with anger. With shock. The child sobbed, screamed for his mother. Yet Carson knew he was doing his best.

  Tunney untied the tourniquet and let the blood flow freely from the wound. He and Carson exchanged sickened glances. It had been a rough remedy, but what else could they have done?

  The father, whom Carson now recognized as the man who had slapped the frail Mariel, was still shouting angry German at him as he held his pregnant wife.

  “Why have you done this?” Meuserbach demanded, standing, white-faced, beside the parents.

  Carson looked at the father, the horror of what they had just been forced to do pawing through him with icy fingers, threatening to weaken him. He gathered his nerve and said as gently as he could, “Not because we wanted to. Copperheads are poisonous—especially to a child this little—”

  “The child could still die,” Tunney interrupted in his deep, gruff voice. “We got here as fast as we could and acted. The child might still die.”

  Looking nauseated, Meuserbach translated their words about the copperhead being deadly. Then there was one of those dazed, horrified silences that Carson had experienced before and hated as much as ever. The sobbing child was getting dangerously red-faced from being hung upside down, and he appeared to be losing consciousness. “Should I hold him like this a little longer, or has it been long enough?” Carson asked Tunney in a lowered voice.

  “A little longer to be safe.”

  Mariel came forward and began talking to the child in a soft, soothing voice. She stroked his tear-wet face with a handkerchief and continued murmuring calming words. The child’s sobs ebbed into a kind of subdued hitching breath.

  “I think it’s going to do more harm than good if we hang him any longer,” Tunney said finally.

  Carson nodded. Gently, he turned the child right side up. The boy lay in his arms, stunned and tear-stained. “Mariel, I’ll need bandages and iodine. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. “Bandage. Iodine.”

  “There are some in my saddlebags. Would you get them, please?”

  Mariel bobbed and hurried to his horse. Soon she returned with a cloth sack full of clean bandages and iodine, which Carson’s mother packed for him every time he left home. The child’s mother was reviving, gasping for breath. The father looked to Meuserbach and rattled off more heated words.

  “But why would you need to cut off his finger?” Meuserbach asked in a strained voice.

  After the rush of peril, Carson was experiencing the let-down. His muscles were loosening, and he wished he could sit down. “A snake bites and shoots his venom, his poison, into the flesh, where it mixes with the blood,” Carson explained while Mariel busied herself bandaging the child’s hand.

  “If the venom gets to the heart, the person dies,” Tunney added. “That’s why Carson swung him upside down to make it harder for the blood to reach his heart. Doctors all think they got antidotes to snake poison, but I never seen one that works like this does.”

  Carson was glad to let Tunney take care of the explanations. Holding onto his self-control, Carson cradled the child close, trying to reassure him with his strength and tight grasp.

  “Carson’s parents are the one who taught us Rangers what to do about snake bites. His pa is half Cherokee, and his ma is a very knowin’ lady. We’re lucky the snake bit the boy’s little finger. That was easy to take off, and most of the venom would have still been in that finger.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Carson spoke, looking toward the mother, the woman he recognized as the one he’d rescued in Galveston when he’d first met Mariel. “But better to lose his little finger than his life.”

  Mariel turned and, without waiting for Meuserbach, evidently translated his words to the mother. The woman staggered to her feet. Followed by her still-glowering husband, she came to her son’s side. Mariel stepped back. The mother took over crooning and stroking the boy’s still-flushed cheeks, then began weeping in a way that troubled Carson. She was nearing hysteria.

  Again Tunney came to the rescue. “Meuserbach, does anyone have any strong drink? A little whiskey or somethin’ strong would calm her nerves a bit. And a few drops would put the child to sleep for a while. They both suffered a bad turn.” The child’s hand was swollen, of course, but so far, he was not having trouble breathing, nor was there any other unusual swelling.

  Many people scrambled to help. Soon the mother sipped some dark red liqueur, and a teaspoonful was given to the child. The little boy fell asleep almost immediately in his father’s arms.

  Carson took a deep breath. “Okay. We have several more miles to cover before we camp for the night. Let’s get moving again!”

  He approached the father and held out his arms, wordlessly asking for the child. “Give me the child. I’ll carry him in front of me.”

  The man glared at him.

  Carson didn’t take offense. Nodding toward the woman, he said, “You need to help your wife. I’ll take the child.” Again, he held out his arms.

  The man muttered angry-sounding words, but he nodded, evidently understanding Carson’s intent. Carson gingerly mounted his horse, then accepted the sleeping child, laying him across his lap. He glanced down and saw Mariel hovering in the fringes of the crowd. He pulled the brim of his hat
toward her. Then he rode to the front again.

  He hadn’t held a small child for a long time. How could a child so small survive what had just happened to him? But Carson knew that they could face worse than this in the miles to come.

  With lowering light, evening had finally come. Mariel rubbed her forehead, then stretched her neck. The uproar over the snake bite had made her feel sick and tense for the rest of the day. Mariel’s heart went out to the two Texians also. They had been forced to take quick and brutal action to try to save a child’s life. She recalled their expressions—so grim, sad, sickened.

  After several nights on the trail, Mariel knew what her chores were in setting up for another night under and around the canvas roof. She carried these out in silence. The whole party seemed subdued. Voices were quieter than usual. No spontaneous laughter sounded as the sun lowered more toward the horizon. She recalled the Ranger’s stern warning in Galveston: “Some of you will die.”

  When all her chores were done, she wandered around the camp, unable to settle down. She wanted to do something for the men who were leading them, protecting them in this unfamiliar wilderness. But what could she do for them?

  She found herself pausing some distance from where the two Rangers sat by a smaller fire near the edge of the camp. Then she thought of a service she could do for the two men. Did she have the nerve to approach them with her shaky English and make the offer?

  She forced herself to walk toward the Rangers. Pausing beside them, she silently waited to be acknowledged.

  The one called Tunney saw her first. He nodded toward her. “What can we do for you, little lady?”

  Mr. Quinn rose.

  His politeness made her look downward. She gestured toward the collar of the handsome Ranger’s shirt, which he wore under his leather coat. “You have tear,” she said, pointing at it. “I sew for you.” She made a sign showing the moving of a needle.

  Before Quinn replied, Tunney grinned. “Why, that’s real nice of you.” He went to his saddlebag and pulled out two shirts, obviously in need of washing and some mending. “Thanks a lot, little lady.”