“Wait—you’re putting that inside me?”
Lydia Hart pressed herself against the rough log wall as far as her wounded leg would allow.
Caleb Rusk sat on one knee beside the narrow bed, holding a steaming strip of blackened linen between a pair of iron tongs. The cloth glistened with pine pitch, rendered fat, crushed yarrow, charcoal, and enough whiskey to make Lydia’s eyes water from three feet away.
The stove roared behind him.
Outside, a Colorado storm beat snow against the cabin windows.
Caleb did not blink.
“It goes in.”
Lydia’s fingers tightened around the quilt beneath her.
“You mean into the wound?”
“Yes.”
“You cannot possibly be serious.”
“I usually am.”
Her face went pale.
Caleb lowered his voice.
“If I don’t do this, you’ll be dead before your wedding dress dries.”
Six hours earlier, death had seemed like the last thing Lydia Hart needed to worry about.
Marriage had been frightening enough.
She had stepped down from the westbound stage outside Leadville, Colorado, under a sky the color of old pewter.
The driver tossed her trunk into the mud.
“End of the line,” Harlan Greaves announced.
Lydia brushed dust from her traveling coat and looked around.
Philadelphia had never seemed farther away.
At twenty-four, Lydia stood almost five feet eleven. She was broad-shouldered, full-figured, strong through the arms, and taller than many men she had known back East.
Philadelphia dressmakers had treated her proportions as a personal insult.
Men had been less polite.
One suitor had told her she looked better suited to hauling flour than attending a ballroom.
Another had asked whether her father had raised a daughter or a farmhand.
Lydia had smiled through both insults.
Then she had gone home and cried where nobody could see her.
After her father died, however, there had been little time left for tears.
His small printing business had failed.
The debts remained.
Her mother remarried within eighteen months, and her new husband, Frederick Bell, tolerated Lydia with the stiff patience of a landlord waiting for a tenant to leave.
Lydia understood the message.
Then, one rainy afternoon, she found an advertisement in a western newspaper.
Colorado mountain man seeks wife. Must be strong, steady, willing to work, not afraid of snow or silence. Beauty not required. Lies not tolerated.
She had read it seven times.
Not because it sounded romantic.
It did not.
Not because the man sounded wealthy.
He did not.
But three words had stopped her.
Beauty not required.
Lydia answered honestly.
She wrote that she was large.
She wrote that she could cook plain food, mend a roof if someone showed her how, carry two buckets without spilling either, and split small pieces of wood badly but enthusiastically.
She admitted she could sew only when forced.
She admitted she had no dowry.
She told him she was tired of being treated as though her body were an apology.
Three weeks later, Caleb Rusk sent enough money for a train and stagecoach ticket.
His reply had contained only eight sentences.
The final one had read:
Come if you mean what you wrote.
So she had come.
Now Harlan Greaves stood beside the stagecoach, looking Lydia over.
“Rusk’ll fetch you,” he said, spitting tobacco into the mud. “If he ain’t froze solid. Man lives higher than good sense.”
“Then I suppose I shall wait.”
Greaves’s eyes traveled over her coat, her broad hips, her large boots.
His mouth curled.
“Well. Rusk asked for strong.”
Lydia met his eyes.
“Then perhaps one of us will not be disappointed.”
Greaves’s smile vanished.
The stagecoach rattled away fifteen minutes later.
Lydia waited.
And waited.
Snow began falling.
By late afternoon she had stopped pretending she was not concerned.
The road emptied.
Wind sharpened.
She was beginning to wonder whether Caleb Rusk had changed his mind when she heard hoofbeats.
A tall bay horse emerged through the snow.
The rider looked even larger than Lydia had imagined.
Caleb Rusk wore a dark wool coat over faded work clothes. Black hair brushed his collar. His beard was thick and streaked with silver near the chin, though Lydia guessed he could not have been much past thirty-eight.
A pale scar ran from his temple toward his cheekbone.
He stopped ten feet from her.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then Caleb dismounted.
“Lydia Hart?”
“Yes.”
His pale gray eyes moved over her face.
Not her waist.
Not her hips.
Her face.
“You waited.”
“You sent for me.”
“I did.”
Lydia swallowed.
“Were you expecting someone smaller?”
Caleb looked at her trunk.
“I was expecting one trunk.”
“I brought books.”
“That explains the problem.”
She stared.
Was that humor?
It disappeared before she could decide.
Caleb lifted her trunk as though it weighed half what it did and strapped it behind the saddle.
“I brought another horse.”
Lydia looked toward the chestnut mare tied behind his bay.
“I have ridden exactly four times.”
“Then today makes five.”
“I fell twice.”
“Today may make three.”
Lydia almost smiled.
The ride into the mountains began in silence.
Caleb had not exaggerated about the distance.
They climbed through pine forest while snow thickened around them. The trail narrowed until Lydia could hear nothing except wind, hooves, leather, and her own breathing.
At first she tried conversation.
“How long have you lived here?”
“Twelve years.”
“Alone?”
“Mostly.”
“Why?”
He looked over his shoulder.
“Mountains ask fewer questions.”
Lydia frowned.
“That may become a problem.”
For the first time, his mouth moved at one corner.
They continued upward.
She learned his cabin sat on nearly eighty acres of rough mountain land where he trapped, hunted, cut timber, and raised a few horses.
He traveled into Leadville for supplies.
He hated town.
He hated crowds.
He had apparently decided he did not hate the idea of a wife.
That subject, however, he did not discuss.
The accident happened less than a mile from his cabin.
A fallen pine crossed part of the trail. Caleb’s horse stepped over first.
Lydia’s mare followed.
Then something burst from the underbrush.
A mule deer.
The mare jumped sideways.
Lydia grabbed the saddle horn.
Her boot slipped from the stirrup.
She fell.
For an instant there was only white snow, branches, and shock.
Then pain ripped through her left thigh.
Lydia screamed.
Caleb was off his horse before she understood what had happened.
“Don’t move.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
His eyes moved toward her leg.
A jagged branch from the fallen pine had punched through her heavy skirt and driven into the flesh above her knee.
Blood darkened the snow.
Lydia looked down.
The world tilted.
“Don’t,” Caleb ordered.
“Don’t what?”
“Look again.”
“You might have mentioned that before I did it.”
He knelt.
His hands were surprisingly careful.
The branch had broken beneath the surface.
Caleb’s jaw tightened.
“We need to get you home.”
“Can you pull it out?”
“Not here.”
“Why?”
“Because part of it is still inside you.”
Fear entered her voice.
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
He cut fabric away from the injury, wrapped the leg tightly enough to slow the blood, then lifted Lydia into his arms.
She stared at him.
“I can walk.”
“No.”
“I’m heavy.”
“Yes.”
Lydia stiffened.
Caleb looked directly at her.
“You’re also bleeding. Those are separate facts.”
For once in her life, the word heavy had contained no cruelty.
He carried her.
That frightened her almost as much as the wound.
Caleb placed her sideways across his saddle and walked beside the horse all the way to the cabin.
By then Lydia was shivering violently.
His home was rough but clean.
One large room contained a stove, table, bed, shelves, tools, rifle rack, and kitchen area. A smaller loft rose overhead.
Caleb put her on the bed.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting the wood out.”
“With what?”
He placed a bone-handled knife into boiling water.
Lydia nearly sat upright.
“Oh, absolutely not.”
Caleb poured whiskey over his hands.
“You want to keep the leg?”
“That depends on what you intend to do with that knife.”
He finally looked at her.
“If I wanted to hurt you, Lydia, I could’ve left you in the snow.”
That ended the argument.
Almost.
He gave her whiskey.
She coughed.
“It tastes like lamp oil.”
“It works better than complaining.”
“I can do both.”
“I noticed.”
He cut away the ruined fabric above her knee.
Lydia grabbed the blanket.
The branch had entered high enough that modesty became an immediate casualty.
“Caleb.”
“I’m looking at the wound.”
“My leg is attached to the rest of me.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then try to behave as though a woman is present.”
His eyes lifted.
“A wounded woman is present. That outranks everything else.”
She had no answer to that.
The extraction was brutal.
Lydia bit into folded leather while Caleb widened the puncture enough to remove two pieces of splintered wood.
When he finished, sweat ran down both their faces.
She thought it was over.
Then he heated the strange black linen.
Which brought them to the present.
“Wait—you’re putting that inside me?”
“It goes in.”
“You are insane.”
“Possible.”
“Caleb!”
“The wood was dirty. That wound was open nearly an hour. Packing it is the best chance I know.”
“Where did you learn this?”
“My mother.”
“Was she a doctor?”
“No.”
“A nurse?”
“No.”
“A reasonable woman?”
“Usually.”
Lydia stared at him.
Caleb sighed.
“She delivered babies, treated miners, stitched hunters, and kept half this mountain alive before there was a physician within fifty miles. She taught me enough to know what happens when a deep wound closes dirty.”
Lydia’s anger faded.
Caleb looked toward the wound.
“I can leave it alone.”
His voice softened.
“But I think you’ll die.”
That did it.
Lydia leaned her head against the wall.
“Do it.”
The pain nearly made her faint.
Caleb worked quickly.
When it was finished, Lydia lay shaking beneath blankets while he cleaned the blood from the floor.
Her wedding dress, packed carefully inside her trunk, had not even been taken out.
She watched him through half-closed eyes.
“You regret sending for me?”
Caleb stopped.
“No.”
“You might tomorrow.”
“No.”
“You hardly know me.”
“I know you waited in a snowstorm when you could’ve turned back.”
“That proves poor judgment.”
“It proves you meant your letter.”
He crossed to her bedside and checked her forehead.
His large palm was cool.
Lydia closed her eyes.
“Caleb?”
“Yes?”
“If I die before we marry, I am going to be extremely irritated.”
For several seconds, silence filled the cabin.
Then Caleb laughed.
It was quiet.
Rusted from lack of use.
But real.
Lydia heard it just before sleep took her.
Hours later she woke burning with fever.
Caleb sat beside the bed.
His boots were still on.
His rifle leaned against the chair.
He had not slept.
She tried to speak.
He reached for the water.
“Drink.”
“Are you always this bossy?”
“Only with dying women.”
“I am not dying.”
“Good.”
“You said I might.”
“I changed my mind.”
Her eyes closed again.
Outside, the storm deepened.
Inside, Caleb Rusk remained beside the woman who had crossed half a country to marry him.
And sometime before dawn, when Lydia began trembling so violently that her teeth knocked together, he took her hand.
Neither of them knew it yet.
But that was the first promise of their marriage.
Not the vows.
Not the ring.
Not the dress.
A rough mountain man sitting through the darkest hours of the night, refusing to let go while a woman he barely knew fought to stay alive.