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  The third thing was what she least expected.

  A mass of dark hair tumbled against the pillow.

  Good Lord in heaven, a woman!

  And one who was near death.

  Chapter Ten

  Sage bent over the still form on the bed, peeled the folded cloth away from the woman’s upper back. A poultice of green moss was bound in place with a leather thong. Drawing her scissors from her bag, Sage slit the tie and let the moss fall into her hand.

  The wound had sealed over, but the area around it was dark and swollen, the skin stretched to bursting over the angry-looking black knob in the center. Infected. It would take a miracle to save her.

  The figure stirred. “Cord?” a weak voice said.

  “Right here, Nita. Rest easy now.”

  Nita. So Cord knew the woman. A girl, really. She couldn’t be more than seventeen. Sage watched the way his hand moved over the girl’s forehead, grazed her cheek.

  A hiccup of unexpected fury slammed into her chest, followed by a gasp of recognition. She was jealous!

  She had no right to such feelings. She was here for one purpose only—to help. Not to wonder over the wave of possessiveness that swept through her. She’d come to heal, not to judge. Not to think.

  The patient’s eyelids fluttered open and the girl tried to smile. “Buenos tardes, señora.”

  Sage leaned close. “My name is Sage West, señorita. I am a doctor. Doctora.”

  The girl inclined her head toward Cord. “Mi esposo.”

  Very slowly, Sage straightened. Husband? Cord was her husband? The possessiveness dissolved into a hollow ache. Cord was not free.

  She met his steady gaze across the expanse of quilt, read his feelings as plain as if they were words printed in a book. Anguish. Desperation. Hope. Save her life, his eyes pleaded, while the silence hummed around them. I can explain

  Whatever the situation, she could not think about it now. She slipped the scissors back into her medical bag, noticing how her hands shook. Cord was a married man? She felt as if she’d been slapped hard by a cold, wet hand.

  Worse, she was frightened. She had never treated such an awful wound. The girl had very little chance of surviving, but still Sage had to try. Now that she knew the girl’s significance to Cord, she must do better than try; she must succeed. I am a physician first, a woman second.

  “Get some water,” she ordered. “And build a fire.”

  They worked side by side the rest of that day and all that night. Sage lanced the swollen head of the infection, but there was little drainage from the site. The poison had spread inward, gone deep into the girl’s slight body. Deep inside she knew it was too late, but she could not give up.

  She laid the steaming compress Cord handed her on the wound, watched him walk away to drop another towel in the pot of water boiling on the stove. His steps were unsteady, his face wooden.

  Sage couldn’t bear to look at him. It is out of my hands, Lord. Don’t let her die. Please.

  Nita lapsed into a drowsy stupor, rousing to awareness only when Sage changed the dressings on her back. “Mamacita,” she muttered at one point. “Tell Papa…tell Papa…”

  Sage bent low. “Tell your papa what?”

  “Antonio…”

  Cord sucked in a breath.

  “Antonio, he is my…” The girl drifted again into unconsciousness.

  Sage looked up at Cord, standing by the bedside. “Who is Antonio?”

  “Her… The man I’m chasing. Antonio Suarez. He’s wanted for murder.”

  Sage nodded and bent to check the girl’s heartbeat. Irregular. And so faint she could scarcely hear it. She needed to tell him.

  “Cord.” She swallowed hard before she could go on. “I cannot save her. It’s gone too far.”

  “I know,” he said, his voice dull. “I’ve seen gangrene before.”

  “It’s gone too deep for surgery. Cutting it out would kill her.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I am sorry. So terribly sorry.”

  “How long?” he asked in a quiet tone.

  Sage studied Nita’s pale, sweat-sheened skin, watched her pull sporadic, uneven breaths through lips that had lost their color. “Before morning.”

  Cord said nothing. He took the dressing she handed him, walked to the stove and dropped it in the simmering water. He fished out another with a crudely carved wooden spoon, wrung it out when he could touch it, and reappeared at the bedside.

  “She is beyond that now,” Sage said gently. “Beyond anything we can do.”

  “Laudanum?”

  She shook her head. “I think she is beyond that, too.”

  Cord bent and laid the hot cloth on Nita’s exposed back. “I’ve got to do something for her, even if she doesn’t need it now.”

  “Yes,” Sage breathed. “I feel the same.” She smoothed her palm slowly up and down Nita’s bare arm. At least the girl might feel her touch, know she was being tended. Know she would not die alone.

  “Can she hear?”

  “Yes. It is the last sense to go.”

  Cord knelt at the head of the bed, brought his mouth close to the girl’s ear. “Nita? Nita, you know that I…”

  Sage scrambled to her feet. She couldn’t bear to listen.

  An hour later, Cord joined her where she paced on the porch. In the faint moonlight his face looked drawn and shadowed. He said nothing, just stood staring out into the night.

  Her heart wrenched at his pain. She remembered all too well the agony she’d felt when her baby brother died. There were no words, just a heavy, suffocating blackness.

  Back at the girl’s bedside, Sage heard a murmur and bent close.

  “Doctora,” the thready voice uttered. “Hear me.”

  “I hear you, Nita. What is it?”

  “Cord…”

  Sage’s pulse jumped. “Yes, your husband. Esposo. Shall I fetch him?”

  “No. Listen…I must tell…”

  “I am listening,” Sage assured her.

  “Papa hurt me. Cord take me away.” She labored for a breath. “To be safe, he take me.”

  “Yes,” Sage said. “I understand.”

  “No, señora, you do not. He marry me to keep safe. But…”

  Sage’s heart seemed to drop, cold and frozen, into her stomach. “But?” She lifted the girl’s limp hand and held it in both of hers.

  “No hemos hecho el amor. Never.”

  No hemos hecho? What was hemos hecho? “You mean you and Cord—?”

  “Only with Antonio. Is sin. Big…” her eyelids fluttered shut “…big sin.”

  “God will forgive you, I am sure,” Sage said, her voice choked.

  “Dios, sí… He forgive. But not Cord. Bueno hombre, mi espos—”

  Sage waited for her to finish the word, take another breath, but she did not. Oh Lord God, she was dead. She had been unable to save her.

  Pain knifed into her belly, cut up through her chest to the backs of her eyes. This poor, troubled girl, grappling with her imagined sin, was at peace now. Sage smoothed one hand over the hot, damp forehead, gently closed the eyelids and knelt by the bed.

  Help him, God. Help me.

  At last she settled Nita’s lifeless hand beside her on the quilt and went to get Cord.

  Together they washed Nita’s body, wrapped it in the quilt without speaking. When the sun rose, Cord took a shovel, walked away from the cabin and started to dig. Sage watched him, dazed with anguish, her mind unable to make sense of what had happened.

  They buried Nita in the shelter of a wind-twisted cypress, and piled rocks over the mound. Neither of them spoke a word until the last stone was added, and then Cord stood at the head of the grave, his hands clenched in front of him.

  “Take care of her, Lord. She’s been through enough.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Cord slid the spade into the opening beneath the front porch, then slowly straightened and turned toward Sage. “Saddle up.”

  “Now? Befor
e…before breakfast? Before… Cord, we haven’t slept since night before last. Don’t you think we should—”

  “Nope.”

  “But I am dead tired. And you are, as well. And hungry.”

  He moved toward her, his mouth a grim line. When he was so close she could see the hard glint in his eyes, he stopped.

  “Look, Sage. I can’t stomach staying here one more minute. You want to sleep in Nita’s bed? Rattle around the cabin where she died?”

  “Well, no. But we could camp outside the—”

  “You could. I can’t. There’s too much of her here.”

  Sage stared at him in dawning awareness. “Why, you cared about her, didn’t you? Really cared.”

  “Yes. What made you believe I didn’t? But not like you’re thinking. She was just a kid, but we traveled a lot of miles together. I’d guess you’d say we were…friends.”

  Some instinct warned her to skip the topic of his marriage. After Nita’s confession about Antonio Suarez, who was apparently her paramour, Sage guessed their married state would be a sore point for Cord.

  She could understand his reticence about staying up here where Nita had died; no doubt he felt a combination of sadness and guilt. She, too, felt a dreadful weight pressing down on her spirit. She had lost her very first patient. What kind of doctor was she if she couldn’t save a life? The failure stung her like a red-hot poker.

  In the next instant she made up her mind. “Yes, let’s ride away from here. I feel sick all over at what has happened. So sick…”

  Cord reached out and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Yeah, me, too. And now there’s—” He bit off the rest of the sentence and turned away.

  She watched him saddle the horses and lead them forward. He tramped inside and returned with her medical bag, tied it on the mare’s back and held the bridle, waiting for her.

  Her head pounded. She couldn’t seem to make her feet move, just stood there as if made of stone. Even her mind worked slowly. Now there’s what?

  This…whatever it was between Cord and her?

  “Mount,” he ordered in an even tone. He handed her the reins and stepped back. Once seated, she fought a rush of despair that washed over her, threatened to choke her. She wanted to vomit. Or scream. Or weep. Maybe all three.

  She clamped her jaws together. Oh, God, she’d wanted to save the girl. Just as she’d wanted to pluck her brother from the clutches of diphtheria.

  Why, God? Why?

  Cord ran a swift glance over the shack, then motioned for her to move ahead of him.

  “What about the cabin?”

  “What about it?” he said.

  “Are you just going to leave it like that? Isn’t there anything you want from inside?”

  “I’ll be back someday. In the meantime, Two Branches can use it. She’ll welcome the shelter come winter.”

  “Doesn’t she live with her people?”

  “Not anymore. She married an enemy warrior. He died in battle, but she couldn’t ever go back. Women do the damnedest things.”

  Again he scanned the vicinity, his gaze lingering on the fresh grave beneath the cypress, then turned his mount and spurred it forward. Without a word, Sage kicked her own mare and started after him, the rising sun at her back.

  Dizzy with fatigue, concentrating hard on staying in the saddle, she jolted down the mountainside, too tired to think or even feel much. She knew from the dew still on the sparse clumps of grass that the early morning was chilly, but she didn’t feel it. Her legs, her chest, her head felt numb, as if stuffed with cotton like a rag doll.

  When they reached the timberline, Cord took the lead, heading straight into the thickest part of the forest. It was almost noon. Sage was so light-headed with hunger and lack of sleep, plus a mind-dulling grief, that she didn’t hear Cord’s order to stop, but plodded on until she felt a tug on her bridle.

  “We’ll stop here and rest.”

  Oh, thank the Lord. “And eat? Can we build a fire, fry some—”

  “No fire,” he snapped.

  “But why?”

  He gave her a long look and suddenly she knew. Her brain could not form complete thoughts, but she could grasp that much.

  Someone was following them.

  Cord jerked out of a sound sleep and lay motionless out of long habit. It was almost sundown, he noted. The sky overhead flamed with gold and then peach as he took stock of the situation.

  The overgrown thicket of salal and vine maple surrounded them on three sides; he lay facing the only entrance, his loaded revolver under the saddle pillowing his aching head. If anyone rode in, he would be seen before he got close enough to fire.

  But was it enough?

  A sparrow hidden among the broad, yellow-green maple leaves started a trilling song, broke off, started again. A good sign. Birds usually shut up when something disturbed them or something foreign entered their vicinity. As long as they kept singing, Cord knew they were safe.

  For the moment. He flicked his gaze from the spreading tree to Sage’s still form, curled up a few feet away on her saddle blanket.

  She wasn’t asleep. Her violet-blue eyes were wide open, looking at him.

  “Good morning,” she said. She glanced at the now-rosy sky. “Or rather good evening. How long have we slept?”

  Cord unkinked his back muscles and sat up. “Not long enough.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Move on down the mountain.”

  She rolled over onto one elbow. “At night?”

  “There’ll be a moon. There was last night, remember?”

  Her expression changed. “I remember.”

  He started to speak, thought better of it, then changed his mind again. “I feel bad about this, Sage.”

  “Of course you do. You’ve lost your…wife. I feel dreadful, too.”

  He gave her an incomprehensible look, one she couldn’t begin to decipher. Resignation? Determination? No, it was a strange mix of the two.

  He stood up, hoisted the saddle onto one shoulder. “You ready?”

  “Ready for what?” She eyed the revolver lying in the depression where his saddle had rested. “What is it you’re not telling me, Cord?”

  He turned toward the gooseberry thicket where he’d picketed the horses. “Nothing much,” he said after a slight hesitation. “Just that I’m sorry I got you into this mess. Guess I was so set on fetching a doctor for Nita I didn’t think things through.”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Cord. I don’t. You couldn’t have known how things would turn out. If anything, I am at fault for not being able to save her.”

  “It’s more complicated than that.”

  “Complicated? In what way?”

  Cord didn’t answer. He couldn’t think how to tell her. Maybe best leave it alone for the time being. He moved toward his mare, taking deliberate, quiet steps. “Just keep singing,” he muttered to the burbling sparrow.

  Sage was beside him in an instant, her saddle blanket folded in her arms. Strands of silky dark hair straggled free of the loose knot at her neck. He remembered she hadn’t combed it in two days.

  “Complicated how?” she repeated.

  Cord made a small sound of annoyance. “You never give up, do you? You just keep worrying away at a crack until it splits open and you can see everything inside.”

  Sage tossed the blanket on the mare’s back, stepped back and propped her fists on her hips. “I am far too tired to worry at a crack, or anything else. As a matter of fact I am too tired to even listen to any more of your don’t-upset-the-lady speeches. If you won’t be honest with me, don’t talk to me at all!”

  Cord dropped his saddle where he stood. “Keep your voice down, dammit. And trust me.”

  “Trust you! Trust you?” she repeated in a lower tone. “You lied to me from the beginning.”

  “I have never lied to you. Or to anyone else.”

  “Then tell me what’s wrong. No one in their right mind rides down a mountainside at night, unl
ess they have to. I’m not so flummoxed by what has happened that I—”

  “Just shut up, will you?” He grasped her shoulders and gave her a quick, hard shake. “Shut the hell up.”

  At that instant the sparrow broke off its song and Cord looked up, over her head. “Mount your horse,” he ordered in a quiet voice. “We’ll ride until sunup. I’ll tell you when to stop, and then I’ll explain some things.”

  When the rain started, a cold, drizzly mist that dampened and then soaked her sheepskin jacket and riding skirt, Sage considered doing the unthinkable: stopping the mare in her tracks, sliding off the animal’s back and crawling into a thimbleberry thicket to sleep. She couldn’t keep going, she just couldn’t. Every muscle and bone in her body screamed for rest, and her mind—well, her thoughts weren’t making much sense.

  Hallucinations, that’s what they were. She imagined the young Mexican girl, Nita, rising from her bed healthy and smiling. Next Sage conjured a crackling hot campfire, toasting her icy feet near the flames. Cord striding toward her, folding her into his arms.

  If only she had been able to save the girl her heart would not feel like a dead tree stump, heavy and misshapen. She would not be stumbling down this pitch-black mountain with rain dripping off her hat brim. If only.

  “What are you stopping for?” Cord’s gravelly voice drifted to her through the fog of disjointed thoughts.

  “I’m…I can’t see the trail.”

  “Trust the horse. Just a few more hours and we can rest.”

  Sage willed her heels to nudge the mare’s flanks, but try as she might, she could not move her legs. Her limbs were no longer connected to her brain.

  “I can’t, Cord. I just can’t.”

  She heard his horse step toward her and stop. She tried to raise her head. “I can’t,” she repeated. “I am sorry.”

  His hand reached for the mare’s halter. “I’ll tie on a lead rope. Just stay in the saddle, that’s all you have to do.”

  She nodded. Water sluiced off the front of her hat onto her thigh.

  He unsnapped his saddlebag and she felt him fuss at the horse’s head. After a moment he looped the reins about her clasped hands, pressed her thumbs down on top of the leather lines. “I know you’re tired. Don’t think about anything but holding on. Think about the hot coffee I’ll brew when we stop.”