Forget Me Not (24 page)

J.D. turned Tequila so that he could check on Birdie. When he got there, Birdie was still pretty well shaken up. Wincing, he held his left arm, the bone between wrist and elbow obviously broken.

Breathing heavily, Birdie said, “I would have surely been dead if you hadn't come in and got me. I owe you.”

“You don't owe me anything.”

The rumble of the chuck wagon as it careened toward them had J.D. glancing up. Boots brought the four mules in at a breakneck pace. Abruptly, he leaned back and gave the reins a stretch to get the mules to stop. Blindly grabbing for the brake handle, he yelled in a well-deep voice, “Whoa! Whoa!”

Dust and pebbles sputtered in the wagon's wake, easing down to a drifting of powder as Boots brought the chuck to a sliding stop. The mules brayed with their lips curled and yellowed teeth bared. Ears pricked with their disgust at being the brunt of such backward treatment. Boots neglected their grunts as he wrapped the reins around the handle and stood.

“What in the hell happened?” he asked Birdie, whose face had gone a paler shade.

“They ran for the water,” Birdie managed to get out between his cracked lips.

“Y'all broke your arm, you nitwit.”

“First break of the spring,” Birdie said, his face a mixture of pain and elation. “I win the pot.”

The boys had been putting money into the broken bone fund all winter, and whoever broke the first bone of the season won the money. There was something
like thirty dollars in the quart glass jar the boys kept beneath one of the floorboards of the bunkhouse.

Josephine made a soft gasping sound that caused J.D. to gaze at her. She stared at Birdie's contorted arm. “Where are we going to find a doctor? Is there a town close by?”

Birdie shrugged. “J.D.'ll set it.”

She looked at J.D. “You have medical training?”

The way she said it, with such incredulous doubt and wonder, he couldn't help laughing as he ran his hand through his hair to push it out of his eyes. He'd lost his hat in the scuffle; no doubt it was pretty well thrashed by now. “I've got no more training than anybody else around here.”

“But he needs a doctor.” Her eyes widened as he brought his hand down. “Your forehead.”

“What about it?”

“You're bleeding.”

J.D. didn't feel anything.

“Good gawd, he's just got a gash on the side of his head,” Boots broke in. “I've had worse.”

J.D. lifted his hand back to his temple, brought his fingers down, and looked at the smears of blood. “You know how to sew, Miss Whittaker?”

“I embroider,” she replied without pause, but her brows had come down in a questioning frown.

“Same thing.” J.D. wiped his hand on the seat of his pants. “If I need stitches, you can sew me up.”

She made a slight breathy noise from deep in her throat, and he wondered if she might be sick. He'd meant to get a reaction out of her.

To his amazement, she didn't faint or puke. She merely straightened and put her hands together in her lap. “My best stitch is the lazy daisy, but don't expect too much if you want anything fancier.”

13

R
ather than continue on to the bed ground, J.D. gave orders to make an early camp at Long Creek. Josephine built cooking pits and got her fires going. Water covering the beans she'd put in a Dutch oven to soak had spilled over in the chuck cupboard and seeped through the cracks to the spices on a shelf below. After a cursory inspection, nothing else seemed to be ruined. Her keg of sourdough starter was all right, too. But no matter how much she wiped down the sides before and after each use, the sticky batter managed to seep through the lid and cake the outside.

There had been a lot of commotion going on for the past hour. The cowboys tried to settle in the herd. The animals had been deprived of water and were making their displeasure known. The endless crying was wearing on Josephine.

Just as she covered the lid to a roast with hot coals, J.D. rode in with Birdie. The cowboy sat astride his horse, holding the reins in one hand. That he'd gotten back in a saddle with a broken arm amazed her.

Rio had been taking care of the horses a close distance away and came over to relieve both men of their mounts. J.D. walked toward Josephine, tugging
off his gloves as he approached with a rolling stride that she'd come to recognize as his alone. She noted that the blood on his temple had dried, his hair sort of stuck together in that spot. Birdie's gait was taxed, his body movements stiff and awkward. He kept his broken arm tucked close to his side. From the grimace twisting his face, it seemed his threshold for pain had all but worn out. She couldn't imagine having to work in the physical state he was in.

Without a word, J.D. went past her and flipped open the cupboard doors. After snatching the full bottle of whiskey, he stole a coffee cup she'd set out. She used it for measuring, having already filled and dumped flour from it for the biscuits.

Tugging the front tail of his shirt free, J.D. wiped out the inside of the cup with the hemmed edge of muslin. He dragged Boots's crate from the front of the wagon and moved around to the eastern side so that Birdie could sit without the setting sun blinding him. The cowboy eased himself down, the flagrant curses spoken beneath his breath not going unnoticed by Josephine.

J.D. popped the liquor bottle's cork and poured a healthy amount into the coffee cup.

“Have a drink, pardner,” he told Birdie, pushing the mug into his good hand.

“Don't mind if I do,” Birdie replied, then took a generous swallow.

J.D. searched through the drawers, fingering the brown-glass medicine bottles so he could read the stained labels. He chose the one marked laudanum. Then he found some linen strips that Josephine kept with the flour sack towels. Lastly, he collected a butcher knife.

That spread panic through Josephine, and she blurted, “What do you need the knife for?”

“What do you think?” His blue-gray eyes held her still.

“I don't know.”

“Then you better stick around and find out. I'll need your help.”

If there was going to be any limb severing, she didn't want to see. She wondered if there was a way for her to sneak a drink of that whiskey for herself. She'd never tasted hard liquor before aside from whatever had been in that bottle Boots had given her after her tomatoes had exploded.

J.D. turned his back to her, the sunset casting his hair in hues of amber and gold. For the first time, she noticed he was without his hat. No wonder she'd been able to stare into his eyes.

The leg bottoms of his denim pants were splattered with mud. A hole in the seat caught her attention, the gash in the fabric just below one of the pockets that hugged the slight curve of his behind. When he moved, a sliver of red showed past the blue denim. His drawers. Josephine averted her gaze, but her mind burned with the image that could only be labeled as alluring. But for the life of her, she couldn't explain why.

Hugh hadn't worn his trousers as tight as J.D. did. Perhaps that was it. Nor had her husband ever gotten a rip in the twill covering his seat. He was too concerned about his appearance ever to be found in such a state of disrepair. Funny how J.D. wasn't at all concerned about his appearance in front of her. That was one of the things that attracted her to him. His ruggedness. The way he'd roll his sleeve cuffs up or, as he'd done just now, untuck the front of his shirt and leave the back in.

“Get a bowl of water.” J.D.'s instructions intruded on her thoughts, and Josephine did as she was told. Collecting the big bowl she'd intended to use for mixing the pie crusts, she went to the sweating barrel, positioned the bowl beneath the spigot, and opened the flow of water.

When she returned to the endgate with the bowl,
she set it down and waited. Silently, she watched as J.D. gently unbuttoned Birdie's shirt. The light touch that he had, the concern for the other man's discomfort, rested as soft as a down feather next to Josephine's heart.

Once Birdie's shirt was off, he sat with the upper portion of his long johns exposed. Josephine was about to turn away to give the cowboy his privacy, but J.D. called her.

“Fill up his cup with more whiskey.”

Josephine picked up the bottle from where J.D. had left it and gave Birdie a liberal refill.

His eyes, watery from the violent pain, met hers. “Obliged, Miss Josephine.”

Josephine wanted to weep. This was the same cowboy who'd played violin music last night. And here he sat in misery with his left arm fractured.

Returning the whiskey to the endgate, Josephine noted that none of the other cowboys had come in. Boots wasn't in view at the fire, and she idly wondered where he was.

After making a quick check of the beans and poking the slab of meat with a fork, she returned to J.D. He'd gotten Birdie out of his underwear sleeves.

Birdie's hairless chest and his lean torso were as white as chicken skin, but from his neck up and his wrists down he was tan—except for that pale band high around his forehead that all the boys had from their hats.

“Get me the gutta-percha that's in the wagon bed,” J.D. said without looking at Josephine, who remained a respectable distance away. “It's in an Arbuckle's bag beneath the front seat next to the jewelry box.”

Josephine had seen the coffee bag before but hadn't looked inside. She easily found what she needed and came back to find J.D. examining Birdie's crippled arm. Birdie stared straight ahead, his eyes fixed on the wrought tripod that supported her bean pot over the fire.

J.D. rested Birdie's arm back in his lap, then turned to her and took the coffee bag. The gutta-percha was a waterproof cloth. She'd seen it used for various things but hadn't known about its use in setting fractures. Reaching for the knife, J.D. stuck the sharp tip into the edge of the cloth, then brought it down and sliced out a piece about a foot square.

She'd forgotten about the bowl of water that he'd asked for until he poured some of the laudanum into it. Then he grabbed one of her towels and dunked the whole of it into the bowl. She was afraid to tell him she'd already used the flour sack to wipe down the endgate after mixing her biscuits.

J.D. wrung the cloth out and went back to Birdie.

“You know this is going to hurt like hell.”

Birdie nodded.

“I'll do it quick.”

Another nod, this one less evident.

J.D. turned to Josephine and looked at her. The expression in his eyes was stony with purpose. “Go into my duffle and get some neckerchiefs. Then dump the cigars out of Boots's cigar box and bring me the box.”

“All right.”

Josephine had to climb into the wagon and weed through the bedrolls until she found J.D.'s. She was uncomfortable searching through his personal belongings. She didn't unearth any manly articles she hadn't already seen on or in her own bedroom bureau. A change of underwear, a couple of shirts, hairbrush and toiletry articles. There was a bar of soap that gave off J.D.'s scent.

Replacing the soap, she found the bandanas and was crawling out of the wagon when a strangled moan ripped through the glow of sunset.

Josephine bit her bottom lip. Poor Birdie . . .

She snatched Boots's cigar box, opened the lid to the aroma of tobacco, and put the cigars on the wagon bed in front of the seat. When she returned to J.D., he
was wrapping Birdie's straightened arm in the laudanum-soaked towel.

The cowboy's shoulders slumped as he drank his third mug of whiskey. J.D. wrapped the strips around the towel and secured them in place with two knots. He cut the remainder off with the knife.

J.D. took the cigar box from her and sliced the lid from the box, then proceeded to dismantle the rest of the hard-board sides and bottom until he had strips about four inches wide. Using the remaining bandages, he loosely wrapped the soft cotton around Birdie's arm for padding before he aligned the cigar box splints over them. That done, he used an extra length of strip and held everything in place.