On Her Way Home (28 page)

The sun in the sky was slipping away now, as Jo listened attentively, captivated by the black imagery of Mac’s memories. She had observed Charlie and Leif leaving the river for home some time ago. They had glanced in the direction of Mac and Jo but had not intruded.

“What happened?” Jo beckoned, softly.

Hesitantly
Mac continued, “The lieutenant sprang up from the ground, intending to charge the captain, but I jumped up and caught him, shoving him back before he could reach him. I remember how strange it felt to be standing on my feet. For six days I had been crawling along on my belly from trench to trench like a dog. I thought that when I shoved him, it would be the end of it, but as I stepped over a snare of barbed wire, a rushing whistle passed over my left ear.” Mac raised his hand, gliding it through the air over his ear. “I looked up in time to see the captain…catch a bullet in his chest. He looked straight behind me, so I whirled around, raising my rifle…supposing I was the next target in sight. The lieutenant…was on his feet, the rifle in his hand and his finger still on the trigger. I stared at him in disbelief.”

Mac’s words were low and anguished now. “I remember screaming at him, ‘What have you done? WHAT IN THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE!’ I can hear my own voice, like an animal in my ears.” Mac rubbed his hand over his face in agitation. “The lieutenant just stared at me. His eyes were void, inhuman, eyes I’d never seen before. It was so still. No Germans, no shelling, no whir of machine guns.”

Mac paused and looked seriously at Jo. “I’d seen a thousand men die, watched them slaughtered in sick and savage ways, but never intentionally…by their own men. I was shocked, enraged, but...the lieutenant…he just looked at me, blank…empty-like.

He pointed his gun at me and said, ‘What of it then? Will we all be spending another day in this hell or just you?’

I yelled at him. ‘You and I…and every other soldier here will
hold
this hill until we have order not to!’”

Mac stopped talking, the desperate scene playing out upon his brow. Jo waited patiently, letting him, if he would, choose to say more. After several minutes, Mac reached around his waist with his opposite hand, his fingers just barely able to find the scar. “The bullet…tore through right here.” Mac leaned back, the flat hard planes of his abdomen rippling as he pointed to a circular scar at the base of his ribs. “The force slammed me back, but I didn’t fall. I remember being confused. I stuck a finger in the hole and when I pulled it away, it was red. It finally dawned on me that he had shot me. The…lieutenant…he looked at me, the blank stare from before was gone. He’d realized what he’d done, but it was a second too late. As I fell, I trained my rifle on him and fired off a round.”

Mac’s hand curled into a fist with his knuckle pointed. He tapped it repetitively, one, two, three, four times in the middle of his forehead, right above his eyes, and then rubbed the spot roughly, his eyes closing in heart-wrenching agony. “My bullet lodged right between his eyes. After I shot him…he just stood there…staring at me. Then he fell forward, crashing onto his side, facing me. A tiny red bead welled up from behind the black hole in his head and dripped down into the corner of his open eye. The last memory I have from that night…is watching it spill onto the ground, like a tear.”

A low hushed breath escaped from Jo’s open mouth. She examined Mac’s scar with deeper scrutiny; it was jagged and long, cutting across his ribs at the side of his waist. “You lived,” she whispered. The idea that he’d made it out of there alive was miraculous to her.

Mac snorted in sick derision, his hate-filled eyes mocking her. “Lived.” He scorned. “
Lived
? I lay in my own curdled blood, in a pile of rotting leaves and earth, gasping through one lung that entire night and the following day. My men…thinking I was dead rolled me into a trench of mangled corpses. I crawled over the bits and pieces of stinking flesh and severed arms, calling for help. After I had shouted for hours, they finally heard me and dragged me back into the trench with them. I drifted in and out of consciousness for the remainder of my time there. Sometimes I would wake up to see the blue sky filtering through the dense trees above me, and I wasn’t sure if I was dead or still living. Other times, all I could focus on was the lieutenant staring at me from where he’d fallen the night before, with his dead eyes.”

Jo listened quietly to the rest of Mac’s haunting tale. “I have only a few hazy memories after that, a temporary aid station, a gritty medic, and then I woke up in a military hospital. The armistice came before I was fully recovered. Some of the wounded men, who were carted off the hill with me, told me what happened. That afternoon, after heavy fighting at our rear, some of our boys had broken through the line, and we were finally relieved.”

Mac and Jo sat quietly by the river for a long time, Mac spent from reliving the nightmare of that battle and Jo sick and saddened. Swallowing a lump in his throat, Mac said, “My captain was a good man. His name was George Cartwright.”

Jo looked at Mac; his jaw was clenched tight, his eyes haunted and guilt ridden. A prickle rose on the nape of Jo’s neck as she slowly put the pieces together. Deep foreboding washed over her.

“And the soldier…the lieutenant you killed?” she whispered.

Mac looked out over the river. His left eye, the only one vi
sible to Jo, narrowed grimly…

“Lieutenant Tom Samuel Archer.”

Jo’s heart burst in her chest, the shock, the repulsion, the unfairness of life, of war, of everything swamping her. Her head moved side to side as if by simply shaking her head, the horror of four years ago could be unwound and relived. Sam! Her thoughts flew to him, to the tragedy that blistered his life before he’d even begun to live it.
And Mac
. Mac sitting cold and cynical beside her, sick with grief and guilt, sick with bitterness for his part in it, what of him? What of the cannonball of injustice that had ripped apart his peace?

Jo’s young, conflict-free life had left her ill equipped to understand this kind of pain, inept to offer any relief for its depths. All she wanted to do was offer comfort, to make him understand that she wasn’t repulsed or disgusted by his confession,
and that he wasn’t at fault for the heartrending outcome.

Deliberately,
she pressed close to his side; the wool of her navy swimsuit, the laughable demon from hours earlier, rubbing against Mac’s scar in perfect insignificant contrast. Jo wrapped her arm around his back, the warmth of her inner arm offering strength for him to rest on. He didn’t move an inch. Didn’t respond to her ministering or acknowledge it in any way, but neither did he shun it. He let her arm be, allowed her to lean her head on his solid shoulder, and
together
they watched the river flow by.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Jo was riding Sergeant, following closely behind Mac down the trail. Leif, Charlie, and Kirby were riding single file up ahead on the narrow stretch of rocky ledge, leading the bull behind them. It had taken them all morning to find the ornery black beast and even longer to convince him to go where they wanted him to. Jo had been commanded at the offset to do exactly as Mac told her and stay completely away from the bull, which she was happy to do. What she wasn’t nearly as happy about was Mac’s proximity to the animal. It had been a dangerous, nail-biting experience watching Kirby, Mac, and Leif join forces to outwit and wrangle the bad-tempered animal and his wide malicious horns. From her saddle Jo had covered her eyes countless times, frightened for Mac’s safety when the bull pawed at the ground, grunted viciously, and charged at him. Mac’s management and maneuvering had kept it at bay, and he was never in any real danger, but to Jo’s inexperienced eyes, he was flirting with death. They were about a half an hour’s ride from home now, and Jo was still recovering from the scare.

It had been two days since the swimming outing, and Jo still didn’t know what to say to Mac regarding his account of the war or if she needed to say anything at all. He seemed intent on burying the incident and pretending as if he’d never opened up to her, but Jo didn’t feel like that would help him to heal. She had been praying earnestly for guidance to help him ever since they’d returned that night from the river, and so far no direct course had been confirmed in her mind. From experience Jo had learned that when clarity is lacking, it is God’s way of telling her to be patient. So, she hadn’t said a word to Mac about the war, or Tom, or anything else regarding it, and life resumed its natural course with work recommencing as always.

Lost in thought, Jo nearly drove her horse into the rear end of Mac’s horse in the narrow path. He was stopped before her, his hand raised to signal for her to do the same, while watching with curiosity several hawks circle in the sky above. A high-pitched squeal ripped the air as Mac dropped his hand to his lips and whistled sharply for Kirby and Leif to halt. The procession ceased, and Leif turned to see what the hold-up was.

Mac pointed at the hawks, calling to the others, “There might be an injured cow.”

Leif followed Mac’s gesture to the sky then nodded his head, yelling back, “Let’s keep going, and when we get around this ridge line, we can take a look.”

Mac nodded his head in the affirmative, and the group pressed on, but a spidery awareness stroked up Jo’s spine, and she was uneasy in her saddle. Ahead of her, Mac kept glancing into the sky every few minutes, following the line of hawks with his eye and appearing increasingly agitated. Over the few short months she’d been here, she’d noticed Mac’s uncanny ability to sense when something was amiss. As the group negotiated the last of the tricky ledge, the mountainside opened up into a wide flat meadow. The bull wandered off to munch some grass, and the riders circled up.

“Charlie, Jo,” Mac said, “I need you to stay put and keep an eye on the bull…from a safe distance,” he stressed, raising his eyebrows insinuatingly at Jo. “We are going to ride in the direction of those hawks. We won’t be long.” The three of them rode off while Jo stared warily at the black bull, fully expecting him to act out now that the boss wasn’t around to keep him in line.

***

Mac rode in the direction of the birds, sincerely hoping that it was a wild kill and not a sick or injured cow. His hopes were dashed when they came up from a shallow ravine and spotted a brown heifer, laying on its side and bloating in the sun. The stench was terrible, revealing that the cow had been dead for a few days already. Cautiously scanning the area for any territorial scavengers, Mac swung off his horse and walked over to the cow, Leif and Kirby quickly behind him.

“It’s one of ours,” Kirby muttered, pointing at the brand on its shoulder. Flies buzzed around the carcass, whipping in and out of its open wounds and making a low ominous buzz with their wings. Mac’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as he strode around the cow and squatted down next to it. Nudging the massive head of the cow up with the back of his glove, he cocked his head to the side, puzzled by something. On closer inspection, his eyes tightened and turned frosty. 

“Shot,” he announced flatly.

“Shot!?” Kirby and Leif stammered in unison, both of them coming to squat down next to Mac in an effort to correct his mistaken conclusion.

“Shot,” Mac said again, pointing to the bullet hole in the cow’s head. The three men stood up and looked around them, examining the scene for more information, a trail, a track, anything that would give them some sign of who the perpetrator was, or which direction they’d gone.

“There aren’t a lot of tracks left,” Kirby said, “but it looks like whoever did it, rode in and out the same direction. He wasn’t just passing through.” Mac appeared calm and collected on the surface, but inside he was raging. Someone had trespassed on his property and shot his cow, and they better pray he wouldn’t find out who it was.

Nothing could be salvaged from the cow, and it was too late in the year to burn it and risk the chance of wildfire, so they mounted their horses and left it to the hawks and whatever other predators would find sustenance in it. Riding back to Jo and Charlie, Mac was silent and angry.

“What was it?” Charlie called to Mac when they rode back into the clearing.

“Dead cow” was the only response from Mac as he pushed past them and started driving the bull back on the path to home. The others fell in beside him, and sensing Mac’s pensive mood, no one spoke until the bull was tucked away safely in the pasture and dinner was steaming on the table.

“I’m going into town tomorrow,” Mac spoke from the head of the dinner table, a spoonful of potatoes resting on his plate. “Mattie, I’ll take Sam with me.”

Jo glanced up at Mac. He had been quiet and introverted all afternoon, and tomorrow they were supposed to be starting the threshing. Whatever he was going to town for must be important, and she wondered what it was.

“I have a few letters to home, if you wouldn’t mind posting them for me?” Jo asked hopefully. Mac simply nodded his head and continued eating his supper.

After dinner he called Jo into his office from the parlor, gesturing for her to take a seat in the chair across from him. He gnawed on the inside of his cheek for several minutes before finally addressing her. “I want you to stay close to the ranch tomorrow.”

Jo’s eyes narrowed curiously at him. “Why?” she asked.

“Just do as I say,” he snapped crossly, while fixing her with a stern look.

Jo had never dealt well with authoritative orders, and Mac’s directives issued bossily riled her. Unwittingly, her eyes filled with defiance, her jaw set at a stubborn angle.

Mac glared at her from across his desk. Leaning forward in his seat, he threaded his fingers together and rested his arms on the shiny wood surface. Peering at her darkly, he said, “Don’t forget who owns this ranch. I’m the boss.” His pointed look was so convincing that Jo momentarily forgot they were friends and that Mac’s hostile stare was a perfected act.

Mac watched the confusion dance around in her eyes and almost felt remorseful, but he batted the pesky feeling away. Until he found out who was skulking around his ranch and who was shooting his cattle, he needed to keep Jo close, keep her safe.

Glaring back at him, Jo leaned across the desk silkily, bringing her face up to his, nose to nose. “Yes sir,
boss
…” she drawled, in a low sexy voice that caught Mac totally unawares. With that she spun on her heel and strode heatedly toward the door, still annoyed at Mac’s evasive commands but also pleased by the hungry gleam she’d seen leap into his eyes. He might be “the boss,” but she’d just reminded him that there was more between them than that.

Mac tore out of his seat and vaulted over the top of the desk in a smooth, liquid slide that staggered Jo and made her cry out in alarm. Catching her by the elbow, he pushed her up against the wall, raising his finger to her lips to hush her. She stared up at him through wide blue eyes with her heart pumping excitedly. Mac’s gaze was scorching as he hovered over her body, pressing her deeper into the rich wood paneling.

“I told you before not to start something you couldn’t finish,” he whispered huskily, his cool breath grazing her temple.

Jo gulped. Her stomach in knots with need and longing.

Mac lifted his hand and trailed his finger, ever so slowly down the side of her cheek.

“Mac?” Leif’s friendly voice called from the parlor across the hall.

Frustrated, Mac forcefully dropped his forehead against the wall and ground out, “What?”

“The paper has predicted a rise in beef prices over the next few years.”

Irritated by Leif’s immaterial information as well as his despicable timing, Mac simulated banging his head against the wall, causing Jo to stifle a giggle as she watched him. In truth, she was near to darting across the hall and strangling Leif herself. The serious moment between Mac and herself ruined, Jo extricated herself from the cage of Mac’s arms and smiled ruefully at him as she turned to go.

Mac grabbed her hand once more. “I’m the boss, and I can fire you if you don’t follow orders…”

Jo’s head tilted obstinately.

“But,” he sighed, a desperate light flooding his eyes, “will you please…promise me…you’ll stay close to the ranch?”

She noticed a vulnerability in Mac’s gaze, the first she had ever seen, and it touched her. She may not know the reasons for his request, but it was obviously important to him that she acquiesce. Smiling sincerely, Jo nodded her head and left the room, the victor of another round with Mac.

***

The following day Mac and Sam departed for town directly after breakfast, and Jo, Leif, and Charlie began the daunting threshing. A neighbor and his bunch of sons owned a newer threshing machine and were scheduled to come over early next week to work on Mac’s fields. The majority of the work would wait for them, but Leif and Mac both agreed to try out the old thresher they had purchased and see if they couldn’t get a jump-start on the harvest. Last year they had traveled around with the threshing crew to the neighbors, helping them with their grain and oats, but it had swallowed up valuable time wherein they could be working the ranch. This year Mac had purchased the old thresher and made a deal with the neighbor. He and Leif would join the threshing crew for two weeks and also breed their bull to his cows free of charge, in exchange for the neighbor’s crew coming to help them when harvest came. Mac had wanted to avoid the threshing crew at all costs, but it was impossible if they wanted their own crop harvested. At least this way, the time away from home would only be two weeks instead of three.

The morning rippled away swiftly for the tiny threshing crew of four, the only breaks occurring when Leif stopped the old machine to fight with it or work out some kink. Mac returned from town around midday after reporting the shot livestock to the sheriff and asking around about the two men, most suspected in his mind. Mac, joining them in the field, brought the tiny crew to five, still a paltry number.

They worked until sundown, only stopping for dinner, with an occasional drink of water carried out to them in the field by Sam and Mattie. By nightfall the crew was too exhausted to visit and, after cleaning up, dropped into their beds, weary from the day’s labor. Even Sam, who had been a bundle of energy this morning, yipping and howling as the thresher chugged smokily into the field, was tuckered out from the harvest.

Three more days flew by in the same physical repetition so that even when Jo lay down at night, her dreams were filled with shucking and hoisting bundles of wheat, pulling wagonloads of grain, and raking piles of straw. During the day she had watched Mattie bustle back and forth from the field to the kitchen with Sam in tow and longed for the day when she would have a home of her own, a field full of her own hearty men, and a kitchen to cook in. Of course, an adorable little boy skipping along beside her with a handful of others wouldn’t be disagreeable to her either.

Sam had come out to the field yesterday with a jug of water wrapped in burlap to keep it cool and handed it happily up to Mac. Watching the two interact, she noticed how, even though Sam wasn’t Mac’s son by flesh and blood, he had adopted identical mannerisms. It made her curious about Tom. What kind of father would he have been? If he had lived through the war, would he have been a mere shell of a person? Would he have recovered from the loss of his favored private? Would all the tragedies of war, the murder he committed, be left behind on the battlefield, the consequences with it? If Mac hadn’t defended himself, would Tom have fired another round and finished him off? What if Mac had died and Tom had lived? Jo would never know the answers to these questions, but when she watched Sam with Mac, witnessed their bond, a calm assurance swelled within her that the best outcome for the horrific chain of events was before her eyes.

At times a fear gripped Jo, like when she observed a cold light flash into Mac’s eyes or spotted a cynical sneer on his face. It was like seeing the sun move behind the clouds, except that the sun would always reappear. Whether Mac increased in the light or moved deeper into murky shadows was still undecided. It was painful to watch his inner struggle. Jo knew he cared for her, more than physically. She tried to be patient, to be strong, hoping that time would sway him, would free him, but it wasn’t an easy course. As her tenderness for him grew, so did the warning voice in her head, crying for self-preservation. Its shout was becoming unbearable, its injured and maimed memory tearing at her insecurities. Jo couldn’t deny any longer what she stood to lose.