Wild Horse Springs

He wasn’t sure if he managed to relax or pass out, but when he landed on a flat rock near the bottom of the canyon, total blackness surrounded him and the few stars above offered no light. For a while he lay still, aware that he was breathing. A good sign. He hurt all over. More proof he was alive.

He’d been near death before. He knew that sometimes the body turned off the pain. Slowly, he mentally took inventory. There were parts that hurt like hell. Others he couldn’t feel at all.

Cody swore as loud as he could, and smiled. At least he had his voice. Not that anyone would hear him in the canyon. Maybe his brain was mush; he obviously had a head wound. The blood kept dripping into his eyes. His left leg throbbed with each heartbeat, and he couldn’t draw a deep breath. He swore again.

He tried to move and pain skyrocketed, forcing him to concentrate to stop shaking. Fire shot up his leg and flowed straight to his heart. Cody took shallow breaths and tried to reason. He had to control his breathing. He had to stay awake or he’d freeze. He had to keep fighting. Survival was bone and blood to his nature.

The memory of his night in the mud near the Rio Grande came back as if it had only been a day earlier, not three years. He’d been bleeding then, hurt, alone. Four rangers had stood on the bank at dusk. He’d seen the other three crumple when bullets fell like rain.

Only it had been hot that night, not cold like now, and then the air had been silent after all the gunfire. He finally heard movement in the shadows and wasn’t sure which he feared more, armed drug runners or demons. If the outlaws found him alive, they’d kill him. If the demons found him dead, they’d drag him into hell. Reality and nightmares dueled in his mind as sanity seemed to drip away with his blood.

Cody had known that every ranger in the area would be looking for him at first light; he had to make it to dawn first. Stay alive. They’d find him, he kept thinking, until he finally passed out.

But not this time. No one knew where he was tonight. Once he lost consciousness, he’d freeze.

No one would look for him tonight or tomorrow. No one would even notice he was gone. He’d made sure of that. He’d left all his friends back in Austin after the shooting. He’d broken up with his girlfriend, who said she couldn’t deal with hospitals. When he came back to his family’s land, he didn’t bother to call any of his old friends. He’d grown accustomed to the solitude. He’d needed it to heal not just the wounds outside, but the ones deep inside.

Cody swore again.

The pain won out for a moment, and his mind drifted. At the corners of his reason, he knew he needed to move, stop the bleeding, try not to freeze, but he’d become an expert at drifting that night on the border. Even when a rifle had poked into his chest as one of the drug runners tested to see if he was alive, Cody hadn’t reacted.

If he had, another bullet would have gone into his body, which was already riddled with lead.

Cody muttered the words he’d once had to scrub off the walls in grade school. Mrs. Presley had kept repeating as he worked, “Cody Winslow, you’ll die cussing if you don’t learn better.”

Turned out she might be right. Even with his eyes almost closed, the stars grew brighter and circled around him like drunken fireflies. If this was death’s door, he planned to go through yelling.

The stars drew closer. Their light bounced off the black canyon walls as if they were sparks of echoes.

He stopped swearing as the lights began to talk.

“He’s dead,” one high, bossy voice said. “Look how shiny the blood is.”

Tiny beams of light found his face, blinding him to all else.

A squeaky sound added, “I’m going to throw up. I can’t look at blood.”

“No, he’s not dead,” another argued. “His hand is twitching, and if you throw up, Marjorie Martin, I’ll tell Miss Adams.”

All at once the lights were bouncing around him, high voices talking at once.

“Yes, he is dead.”

“Stop saying that.”

“You stop saying anything.”

“I’m going to throw up.”

Cody opened his eyes. The lights were circling around him like a war party.

“See, I told you so.”

One beam of light came closer, blinding him for a moment, and he blinked.

“He’s hurt. I can see blood bubbling out of him in several spots.” The bossy voice added, “Don’t touch it, Marjorie. People bleeding have germs.”

The gang of lights streamed along his body as if trying to torture him or drive him mad as the world kept changing from black to bright. It occurred to him that maybe he was being abducted by aliens, but he doubted the beings coming to conquer the world would land here in West Texas or that they’d sound like little girls.

“Hell,” he said, and to his surprise the shadows all jumped back.

After a few seconds, he made out the outline of what might be a little girl, or maybe a short ET.

“You shouldn’t cuss, mister. We heard you way back in the canyon yelling out words I’ve seen written but never knew how to pronounce.”

“Glad I could help with your education, kid. Any chance you have a cell phone or a leader?”

“We’re not allowed to carry cell phones. It interferes with our communicating with nature.” She shined her flashlight in his eyes one more time. “Don’t call me kid. Miss Adams says you should address people by their names. It’s more polite. My name is Melanie Miller, and I could read before I started kindergarten.”

Cody mumbled a few words, deciding he was in hell already and, who knew, all the helpers’ names started with M.

All at once the lights went jittery again, and every one of the six little girls seemed to be talking at once.

One thought he was too bloody to live. One suggested they should cover him with their coats; another voted for undressing him. Two said they would never touch blood. One wanted to put a tourniquet around his neck.

Cody was starting to hope death might come faster when another shadow carrying a lantern moved into the mix. “Move back, girls. This man is hurt.”

He couldn’t see more than an outline, but the new arrival was definitely not a little girl. Tall, nicely shaped, hiking boots, wearing a backpack.

Closing his eyes and ignoring the little girls’ constant questions, he listened as a calm voice used her cell to call for help. She had the location down to latitude and longitude, and described a van parked in an open field about a hundred yards from her location where they could land a helicopter. When she hung up, she knelt at his side and shifted the backpack off her shoulder.

As she began to check his injuries, her voice calmly gave instructions. “Go back to the van, girls. Two at a time, take turns flashing your lights at the sky toward the North Star. The rest of you get under the blankets and stay warm. When you hear the chopper arrive, you can watch from the windows, but stay in the van.”

“McKenna, you’re in charge. I’ll be back as soon as they come.”

Another M, Cody thought, but didn’t bother to ask. Maybe your name had to start with M or you couldn’t be in this club?

To his surprise the gang of ponytails marched off like tiny little soldiers.

“How’d you find me?” Cody asked the first of a dozen questions bouncing around in his aching head as the woman laid out supplies from her pack. The lantern offered a steady circle of pale light.

“Your cussing echoed off the canyon wall for twenty miles.” Her hands moved along his body, not in a caress, but to a man who hadn’t felt a woman’s touch in years, it wasn’t far from it.

“Want to give me your name? Know what day it is? What year? Where you are?”

“I don’t have brain damage,” he snapped, then regretted moving his head. “My name’s Winslow. I don’t care what day it is or what year for that matter.” He couldn’t make out her face. “I’m on my own land. Or at least I was when my horse threw me.”

She might have been pretty if she wasn’t glaring at him. The lantern light offered that flashlight-to-the-chin kind of glow. With her arms on her hips, she had a kind of Paul Bunyan’s little sister look about her.

“Where does it hurt?” She kept her voice low, but she didn’t sound friendly. “As soon as I pass you to the medics, I’ll start looking for your horse. The animal might be out here, too, hurting or dead. Did she fall with you?”

Great! His Good Samaritan was more worried about the horse than him. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. When I fell off the edge of the canyon, Midnight was still standing, probably laughing at me.” He took a breath as the woman moved to his legs. The pain came sharp suddenly. “I tumbled for what seemed like miles. It hurts all over.”

“How did this happen?”

“The horse got spooked when we hit a patch of ice,” he snapped again, tired of talking, needing all his strength to handle the pain. Cuss words flowed out with each breath. Not at her, but at his bad luck.

She ignored them as she brushed over the left leg of his jeans, already stained dark with blood. He tried to keep from screaming. He fought her hand now as she searched, examining where something had to be broken it hurt so much. He knew he couldn’t take much more without passing out.

“Easy,” she whispered as her blood-warmed fingers cupped his face. “Easy, cowboy. You’ve got a bad break. I have to do what I can to stabilize you and slow the blood flow. They’ll be here soon. You’ve got to let me wrap a few of these wounds so you don’t bleed out.”

He nodded once, knowing she was right.

In the glow of a lantern she worked, making a tourniquet out of his belt, carefully wrapping his leg, then his head wound.

Her voice finally came low, sexy maybe if it were a different time, a different place. “It looks bad, but I don’t see any chunks of brain poking out anywhere.”

He didn’t know if she was trying to be funny or just stating a fact. He didn’t bother to laugh. She put a bandage on the gash along his throat. It wasn’t deep, but it dripped a steady stream of blood.

As she wrapped the bandage, the starched cotton over her breasts brushed against his cheek, distracting him. If this was her idea of doctoring a patient with no painkillers, it was working. For a few seconds there, he almost forgot to hurt.

“I don’t have water to clean the wounds, but the dressing should keep anything else from getting in.”

Cody began to calm. The pain was still there, but the demons in the corners of his mind were silent. Watching her move in the shadows relaxed him. She wasn’t petite, but tall and built with curves that her trousers and man’s shirt couldn’t hide.

“Cody,” he finally said. “My first name is Cody.”

She smiled then for just a second.

“You a nurse?” he asked.

“No. I’m a park ranger. If you’ve no objection, I’d like to examine your chest next.”

Cody didn’t move as she unzipped his jacket. “I used to be a ranger, but I never stepped foot in a park.” He could feel her unbuttoning his shirt. Her hand moved in, gently gliding across his ribs. “I put in a few years as a Texas Ranger.”

When he gasped for air, she hesitated, then whispered, “One broken rib.” A moment later she added, “Two.”

He forced slow long breaths as he felt the cold night air pressing against his bare chest. Her hand crossed over his bruised skin, stopping at the scars he’d collected that night at the Rio Grande. The night he bled into the mud. The night he first heard the devils hiding in the shadows.

She lifted the light. “Bullet wounds?” she questioned more to herself than him. “You’ve been hurt bad before, Ranger Winslow.”

“Yeah,” he said as he took back control of his mind and made light of a gunfight that almost ended his life. “I was fighting outlaws along the Rio Grande. I swear it seemed like that battle was almost two hundred years ago. Back when Captain Hays ordered his men to cross the river with guns blazing. We went across just like that, only chasing drug runners and not cattle rustlers like they did back then. But we were breaking the law not to cross just the same.”

He closed his eyes and saw his three friends. They’d gone through training together and were as close as brothers. They wanted to fight for right. They thought they were invincible that night on the border, just like Captain Hays’s men must have believed.

Only those rangers had won the battle. They all returned to Texas. Cody had carried his best friend back across the water that night three years ago, but Hobbs hadn’t made it. He’d died in the shallow water a few feet from Cody. Fletcher took two bullets, but helped Gomez back across. Both men died.

“I’ve heard of that story about the famous Captain Hays.” She brought him back from a battle that had haunted him every night for three years. “Legend is that not one ranger was shot. They rode across the Rio screaming and firing. The bandits thought there were a hundred of them coming. But, cowboy, if you rode with Hays, that’d make you a ghost tonight, and you feel like flesh and blood to me. Today’s rangers are not allowed to cross.”

Her hand was moving over his chest lightly, caressing now, calming him, letting him know that she was near. He relaxed and wished they were somewhere warm.

“You’re going to make it, Winslow. I have a feeling you’re too tough to die easy.” The lights of a helicopter circled above them.

He didn’t want to think about dying or being hurt. He pushed the ghosts who always followed him aside and focused on her. “If I live, how about we get together and talk sometime? Any woman who has six kids, can handle injuries in the dark and recognizes bullet wounds is bound to be interesting.”

She laughed. “You got yourself a date, Cody.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

1 a.m.

Wednesday

A LITTLE AFTER closing time at the Nowhere Club, Dan walked out to his Jeep. The midnight wind blew sideways, pounding tiny balls of snow as hard as gravel against his face, but he barely noticed. His evening with Brandi Malone wasn’t over, and that was all that really mattered.

The only person still parked out front was the big guy who’d sat next to Dan during Brandi’s last performance. He looked like he was sleeping off a heavy drunk in his old one-ton rig that took up two parking spots. He didn’t move when Dan walked within three feet of his window, and the sheriff was glad. The last thing he wanted to do tonight was arrest a man for stalking Brandi. Hauling the drunk in would ruin both Dan’s and the drunk’s night.

The trucker’s engine was idling, so Dan doubted he’d freeze even if he ran out of gas. Hank usually made sure the parking lot was cleared before he did the final lockup. The manager said once that drunks were like fish—they smelled if left out overnight.

Dan started the Jeep. It might not look like much, but the engine never failed to turn over. He pulled around the back of the bar, and Brandi darted out. She jumped in, squealing about the cold, and Dan laughed as he made a wide circle around the truck out front. He didn’t know what it was about this woman, but she made him feel free, like no troubles would find him as long as she was riding shotgun.

“You worried about leaving your van?” he asked, hating that he sounded like a cop. He pulled a blanket from the back and covered her.

She cuddled the wool all the way to her chin. “No, I’m not worried. I left it unlocked. If someone steals it, I’ve got insurance. If one of the drunks wants to see what’s inside, they’ll have to go through dirty laundry and a dozen fast-food bags to learn all my secrets.”

“You have secrets?” Dan didn’t turn on his lights until he pulled onto the highway. The snow fell thick and heavy, making it hard to see, but he knew the road back to Crossroads.

He hadn’t asked her which motel she was staying in. There was only one within twenty miles of the bar.

She tugged a multicolored knit hat down over her ears. “Everyone past puberty has secrets. I figured you’d already know that, Sheriff. You tell me one of yours, and I’ll tell you one of mine.” She grinned as if they were playing a game.

“Right now, you’re my secret. Not that I care if everyone knows we’re going out, if that’s what you call this thing we’re doing, but just for a while I’d like to keep you to myself.”

“Any others?”

“Ladies or secrets?”

“Secrets. A man who hasn’t been kissed since New Year’s Eve a few years ago has no ladies tucked away.”

He figured he must seem pretty pitiful. Brandi probably had a lover in every town. “Nope. I’m pretty much an open book. No secrets or lovers, except you.”

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