Canyon Song (2 page)

I’d be leaving him for dead.

Without conscious volition, her hand left its warm pocket, then glided to the spot at her belly where her clothing hid her scar. Her gaze drifted from the old horse and slid lower, lower, until it reached the visible portion of the gambler’s bleeding face.

Notion raised himself onto his haunches and stared at her, then howled
. He might have been her conscience, given form and fur and lungs.

This time, its voice was too loud to do anything but heed
. She’d try. From the looks of the gambler, he’d probably die anyway and resolve her dilemma. If she did what little she could, at least she wouldn’t have to add his death to her guilt.

Though she was quite tall, Anna had never been particularly strong before she came to live with the old woman
. Her life had been hard in many ways, but not in those which conferred power. When she’d come here, badly wounded, she’d been weaker still. Yet as soon as she was able, the curing woman had demanded she adapt to the rigors of this place, to help earn her food.

Gradually, Anna grew into the work as if she had been born to it
. She chopped wood throughout the year for heat and cooking. In the winter, she chopped holes, too, in the creek ice to draw water. She planted corn and beans and squash. She tended these throughout the growing season, along with chickens, when she could keep the foolish creatures safe. She had a few goats, which were smarter than the chickens and at times required milking. Along with these responsibilities, she had been expected to dig the various roots, scrape bark, and gather leaves for the old woman’s potions.

All of this made Anna stronger than she’d ever been before
. Even so, she struggled to drag the wounded man inside the cabin.

Groaning at her aching right knee and her cramping muscles, she cursed the Navajo who’d brought him
. They could have saved time and the strain on her muscles by bringing him just this much farther. But the idea of Indians knocking at her door was almost beyond imagining. The Navajo might have a grudging admiration for the skills of Señora Valdéz, but they still avoided her as an outsider, a non-person in the terms of their beliefs. She rarely caught a glimpse of a foraging squaw or child or hunting warrior. In lieu of either attacks or friendship, they sometimes left strange tokens of acceptance: a clay pot filled with honey, a pair of moccasins. In accordance with the curing woman’s wishes, she left a skin of Señora’s smelly goat’s milk unguent upon a certain split rock on the plateau twice a year at intervals marked by the moon and season. Anna had left her strange offering only twice since the old woman died in her sleep last spring.

She’d have to use the unguent now to try to help this man
. Notion watched expectantly as she pushed the limp form closer to the fire. The gambler’s flesh felt cold beneath her hand, but he’d groaned several more times as she’d moved him, enough to let her know that he yet lived.

Funny, how she didn’t find that reassuring.

She thought of bringing him her blanket, but decided instead to check his wounds. First, she retrieved the pan. After refilling it with snow, she hung it on a rack beside the fire, which she had just rekindled. Though she’d prefer to cook her coffee, right now she’d need warm water to bathe the half-congealed blood from his injured body.

Next, she slowly, carefully removed his bloody clothes.

*     *     *

She had to be a nightmare, Quinn decided, some phantasm brought on by his body’s desperate struggle against pain, blood loss, and cold
. She couldn’t be real, couldn’t, for if she were, he must be dead.

If she were, he must now be in hell.

Curled up on his side, he watched her furtively through slitted eyes. Because he suspected his wounds of playing havoc with his reason, he catalogued her features: the tall, slim build, the sun-streaked, straight blond hair, which fell loose well past her shoulders, the broad cheekbones and straight nose, and the pale eyes, which looked smoky inside the dimness of this cabin. She looked no less beautiful, but she had changed in many ways. The bright blue silk dress had given way to a rough shirt and what looked like miners’ Levis, which molded to her body in a manner he found surprisingly provocative. But beyond that, her merry smile had vanished; the flirtatious gleam had fled her eye. Instead, she now looked chiseled by hardship or the elements, or perhaps by her own sins.

As she withdrew a long and vicious-looking knife, he decided that this must be hell indeed, for she clearly meant to add more mischief to all she’d wrought already, years before
. Did the demon mean to flay the flesh from him, too, now that she’d stripped him of all else he had owned?

Though he swore to remain still, feigning death, the memory of the last time he’d lain helpless while she worked drew forth a shudder, excruciating in intensity
. He groaned against his will.

“
Paz, mi amigo
.” 

The honeyed richness of her voice convinced him beyond all doubt that this was really Annie Faith, despite her use of Spanish
. Her words flowed as sweetly in that tongue as in the English she had spoken years before.

“
En el nombre de Cristo, te voy a ayudar
,” she continued, promising he knew not what. No matter, for even when he’d understood her, her words had all been lies.

She pulled something on a long cord over her head and placed it in his right hand
. “
Por valor
,” she offered.

He thought back to his own scant store of Spanish phrases
. Didn’t that last mean “for courage”? Yes, he needed that right now. He pressed the crucifix into his palm while she cut away his outer coat, his jacket, and his shirt. She peeled back the sodden layers, and he squeezed the silver cross more firmly so he would not cry out with the pain.

“¡
Dios mio
!” she swore a moment after he felt cool air against his back.

“Speak English, please,” Quinn grunted
. “I know that you can.”

Her gaze met his, the gray-blue of her eyes for a moment a cold fire
. He realized his mistake then. Before that moment, she probably hadn’t known he recognized her. Perhaps she did not remember him at all. In the six years since she’d robbed him, she could have had many victims.

Her expression said she hated him for remembering wh
o
and wha
t
she was. The steely flame of her eyes promised he would die soon, most likely at her hand, if the bullet couldn’t kill him fast enough.

Silently, he called upon the power behind the tiny cross to come to a sinner’s aid.

*     *     *

Anna wrung the damp cloth
. The warm water that dripped into the pan blushed deeply with an infusion of Quinn’s blood.

Such a lot of blood
. Even more than Catalina Rodriguez lost the night that she gave birth. And the Mexican woman had been delivered of the growing child within her. Quinn, in stark contrast, had been invaded by a smaller and infinitely more hostile body.

She thought again of Catalina’s newborn daughter, tried to reassure herself that this infant, like the last two, would be fine
. She would have to be, for Anna couldn’t leave here now. Maybe not for a long time, if Quinn survived.

Anna dug the bullet from his left shoulder as if she were a prospector extricating a rare nugget
. She only hoped her mining expedition didn’t kill him. Weak from blood loss and exposure, he might easily succumb to an infection from her makeshift surgery.

Anna wished the curing woman were alive to help her
. Born Hattie Forster in the Appalachian Mountains of Central Pennsylvania, the scrappy blue-eyed woman told Anna she’d learned healing at her own grandmother’s elbow. But Hattie’s father, a trapper, had moved the family ever westward, in search of better furs and wider spaces. Somehow, during the clan’s travels, Hattie met and married a Mexican soldier named Carlos Valdez just outside of Santa Fe. While her husband fought Indians across the region, Hattie lived with his
familia
. By necessity, she picked up Spanish. As the years passed, she blended what she learned of
curanderismo
, the local healing art, with her own folk healing. For every ailing or wounded creature she encountered, the old woman had an opinion, some herb or unguent or prayer ceremony that would fix it, if only it were carried through with solid faith and a good heart.

Señora Valdez would have known just what to do, thought Anna grimly, but her own experience with gunshot wounds consisted only of butchering a couple of deer and a jackrabbit
. She hadn’t even been completely certain the man had been shot until he started muttering about it before he’d passed out.

Quinn’s breath rattled more loudly than the mumbled words, more noisily than the popping of the fresh log she had placed on the fire
. He swore again about the bastard who’d back-shot him.

Judging from his breathing, blood loss and a bullet wound were not his only problems
. Time spent lying on the cold ground had touched his lungs with death. Anna half-expected every exhalation to be his last. Yet he had obviously been a man in the prime of his vigor, so he had strength to draw on as he slept.

She washed his face next to uncover the handsome features she remembered: the wide-set eyes, now closed and shadowed, the generous mouth, its good-natured grin now vanquished, the slightly crooked nose, a memento of a prizefight gone far wrong
. She nearly smiled at the memory of Quinn telling her the story. His self-deprecating humor as he spun a half-truth into tall tale to amuse the saloon’s singer, a woman he’d been surprised to learn was not a whore.

Annie Faith
.
She could almost hear the way it sounded when he said it, though six years had passed since anyone had called her by that name.

Not long after she’d gone west, Anna had received the sobriquet courtesy of a love-struck cowboy
. He’d claimed she reminded him of a long-lost sweetheart out Kansas way. The name had been as good as any, better by far than her own, too formal appellation. For the thought of strange, drunken men calling her Anna Bennett overwhelmed her with memories of others who had once spoken her name. First her mother, who had died so many years before that Anna didn’t know if her voice was remembered or imagined. Next Grandmother, whose stern, relentless love had been so difficult to bear. And last of all, her father, who had wounded her more deeply than she’d imagined possible.

For a long time, she’d been Annie Faith, even to herself
. Annie Faith could still smile and sing. Annie Faith could even dream. Anna Bennett had lost all those gifts that day when she’d returned for Papa with a handful of stolen coins. And found him — but that didn’t bear thinking of right now.

Only when she’d come here had she realized that false identity had been her armor, as thin and brittle as a wasp’s carapace
. And like a wasp, it had a sting. The smile had been illusory, an enticement for those whose gold might take her from this raw, rough town. The songs had ignited false hopes for a future forever beyond the likes of her. The dreams had been the cruelest though, for these had convinced her that there was no price too high to achieve them.

She had sold her talent to survive, but she had sunk even further to pursue her foolish dreams
. She cursed them now, realizing that her only chance at peace had been to turn her back on them, to live alone inside her canyon. The canyon where she’d somehow found the strength to go on living, despite losing self and song. The canyon, which was now her universe.

She hated sharing it
. The presence in this canyon was  all the company she wanted. Her infrequent sojourns to visit the curing woman’s Spanish-speaking patients gave her all the purpose she required. She didn’t need a man, and most especially not this one.

Yet she had him, as long as he survived
. So she put on her coat and went outside to gather what she needed for the poultice she would make to try to cure him.

Estiércol de la vaca
. She needed cow manure, according to what the old woman taught her. But Anna had no cow, and in a pinch she knew the fresh droppings of any plant-eater would do. At first, used to the ministrations of the eastern physicians from her youth, Anna had been horrified at Señora’s suggestion. But she had seen the reeking concoction prevent infection more than once.

The goats baaed a reminder of their late breakfast
. Anna threw them an armload of the bundled dried grasses she stored in the crude feed shed. In return, the spotted billy goat provided her with the most important component for her poultice.

Carefully, Anna scooped the still-steaming offering onto a shovel and carried it indoors.

*     *     *

“Good God,” Quinn moaned
. “Are you trying to kill me?”

He said the words as he was waking, before he had the chance to recall to whom he spoke
. Before pain buried him like a landslide. He felt crushed beneath the weight of it: the pounding in his head, the burning in his left shoulder. His first reaction was to gasp in shock and outrage, but his lungs felt choked with mud, his nose with something worse.