Page 28 of Texas Destiny
He dropped the knife. Wrapping his warm hands around her calf, he lowered his mouth to the wound. His jaws worked feverishly as he sucked and spit. Sucked and spit. Over and over.
She touched her finger to the black patch dangling from her calf and shifted her gaze. No strip of leather indented his brow as he worked. His thick black hair fell over his face, and she had a strong urge to brush it back.
“Am I going to die?” she asked quietly.
He jerked his head up, apparently forgetting or unaware that he wasn’t shielding his face from her gaze. Nothing remained of his left eye or cheek. His tangled flesh was stretched taut in places, ridged and heavily scarred in others, as though his ravaged face hadn’t quite known how to repair itself. She wanted to weep for the pain he must have endured, for the wounded child he had once been.
“No,” he said with conviction. “No, you’re not gonna die.”
He scooped her into his arms as though she were little more than a bouquet of flowers, freshly picked. She pressed her face against his chest as he carried her in long strides back to the camp. She could hear the pounding of his heart, so hard, so fast that she was certain he was in pain. He set her down near the cold ashes of their campfire. “I’m still bleeding.”
“That’s all right. Let your leg bleed for a while. I’m going to set the tent back up.”
“Why?” she asked, the panic knotting her stomach.
Gently, he cradled her cheek. She felt the slight trembling in his fingers and placed her hand over his. His Adam’s apple slowly slid up and down.
“You’re gonna get sick,” he said, his voice ragged. “Real sick.”
“I didn’t see a snake,” she said, hopefully.
“He left his mark. Probably a water moccasin, maybe a rattler that close to shore.”
He withdrew his fingers, and a coldness seeped through her. A shudder racked her body.
He tore off his duster and gently slipped it over her shoulders, tucking it in around her. He pulled his shirt over his head and wadded it up. “Here, lie down.”
She curled up on the ground. “I’m tired,” she said, her tongue feeling thick. “Didn’t sleep well last night.”
“You’ll sleep today. I’ll be back for you.”
Before she could reply, he raced to the wagon and began searching through its contents, an urgency to his movements. Her eyelids grew heavy, but she forced them to remain open as she watched him set up the tent beneath the shade of a tree.
His back was lean, tanned, and she wondered if he often worked without a shirt. His muscles reminded her of a stallion’s, sleek but powerful, bunching with an easy grace as he worked.
She closed her eyes and the dizziness assaulted her as the blackness swirled around her. Jerking her eyes open, she fought to ignore the throbbing pain in her calf and concentrated instead on the plainness of the patch that usually covered the harshest of Houston’s scars. Perhaps she would decorate it with tiny flowers before she gave it back to him.
As she reached for it, to examine it more closely, so did long brown fingers. She watched as Houston removed the strip of leather from her leg and tied it around his head, the patch falling into place to cover his loss.
He wrapped a strip of cloth around her wound. Then he lifted her into his arms and carried her into the tent, gingerly setting her on the cot.
“Do you think you can get out of your wet clothes or do you need me to help?” he asked.
She glanced at her nightgown waiting on her pillow. She nodded lethargically, her tongue struggling to form the words. “I … can.”
“Good. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He disappeared before she could say more. Sluggishly, she worked her way out of her clothes, leaving them heaped on the floor. She slipped on her nightgown before curling up on her side and drifting off to sleep, trusting her life to Houston’s keeping.
Houston scooped the mud out of the bowl and patted it over the swollen flesh on Amelia’s calf, hoping the coolness would reduce the swelling. Damn, he didn’t want to have to cut out part of her muscle. He knew the venom could kill the flesh, the muscle, and in rare instances, the victim.
The thought of her dying caused a hard, painful knot to settle deep in his chest. He was certain she had more questions she wanted to ask, discoveries she wanted to make.
He wanted her to see a sunset from the porch of his cabin, with the far off horizon a distant haze. He wanted to learn to answer her questions with patience.
He wanted to watch her daughter grow up.
For some ungodly reason, he thought she’d give Dallas a little girl instead of the son he craved. He imagined a little girl with Amelia’s golden hair, her green eyes, and her tiny tipped-up nose, running over Dallas’s ranch, wrapping cowhands around her tiny finger. He hoped sometime she’d visit with her Uncle Houston. He’d give her a gentle mare to ride and share his secret place with her where the wildflowers bloomed, the water misted, and the sky was always blue.
