{Chapter 29}

“Stay with me, Erik” Toni pleaded trying to stop the bleeding from Erik’s side.

She removed the bloodied shirtsleeve to look at the wound, but she couldn’t see through his shirt. Unbuttoning his shirt, she reached for one of the knives he kept strapped to his chest and cut off the shirt.

Tiny and Rawhide were tending to Ben, whether he was dead or alive, so Toni was forced to tend to Erik herself. His eyes were closed, and he was barely conscious, but alive. She had to take anything she could get at a time like this.

She reached over and plucked a freshly washed and folded nightgown from its place in her drawer, and commenced to ripping it in strips.

“Just hang on until the doc gets here, Erik. If you die on me I’ll bring you back to life and kill you myself, ya hear?” She folded up the cotton strip and pressed it to the wound.

Then it dawned on her.

An exit wound.

“Erik, I’ve gotta check for an exit wound, okay? You just be praying that you have one. Now I’ve gotta roll you over for a second, okay?” Toni braced herself and gently rolled him onto his side. His cry of pain was nearly her undoing. She found an exit wound and breathed a sigh of relief. Now she just had to hope that his vital organs were still intact. She placed a piece of the cloth onto the wound and rolled his back over onto his back.

Finally, she got the bleeding to slow down. Breathing a sigh of relief, she placed a blanket over him and sat down beside him on the bed. She looked at his face, so contorted with pain yet so calm. She so badly wanted him to live.

Toni smoothed the hair off his forehead and found that it was as soft as it looked, though soaked with perspiration, and sighed. She leaned forward and kissed his forehead, surprised when a tear started rolling down her cheek. She looked down as three or four fell onto her lap.

“You can’t leave me, too,” she whispered as she lay down beside him and held his hand in her own. “I’ve fallen for you, too.”

**********

“Are you gonna take all day?” Ben turned around, sitting tall and erect on his horse, watching her bounce up and down on her old mare.

“I’m trying but… this horse is killing me!” Katie bounced down hard on the saddle.

“I do believe you’re terrible at riding a horse in a normal position,” Ben laughed.

“Normal? What’s normal about this? This are in places they normally aren’t, and that includes my innards,” Katie protested.

“What’s normal about being coiled up like a rattler when you’re ridin’ a horse?” Ben retorted.

“No lady ever questions propriety” Katie stopped her horse and slid off. “I need a break, my legs are killing me.”

“Then you must not be too much of a lady, huh?” Ben grinned, hopping off his quarter horse.

She shot her eyes at him. “I’m a perfect lady, thank you very much.”

“Yeah, and you’re also wearing jeans” Ben grinned.

Katie huffed. This was the first and last time she would ever take a riding lesson from Ben.

“These are the result of a desperate attempt to fit in” she stated.

“Of course. Let’s not even mention the fact that you’re out here in the middle of nowhere, alone, with me. How does that set with the propriety book of etiquette?” Ben grinned mischievously at her.

“It sets under the category ’mistake made by a woman who’s a sucker for green eyes’, that’s what” Katie huffed.

Ben stepped closer. “Mistake? I don’t think so.”

Katie looked at him as he stopped right in front of her, his face only inches from hers. “You set this whole thing up, didn’t you? You never thought I was going to need to learn to ride.”

Ben acted like he was thinking. “No. No, I’m pretty sure I set this thing up. How else was I going to get past the Boss Lady?”

Katie socked him on his chest. “You’re a sneak, and a…”

“Coward, cad, moron, ignoramus… Yeah, I get it. You’re mad at me” Ben smiled, wrapping his arms around her waist.

“What are you doing?” Katie tried to tug free.

“What I know you want me to” Ben answered.

She didn’t like that look in his eyes… or maybe she did.

Then, he did the unthinkable.

Katie jerked back to reality from her daydreaming with tears flowing down her cheeks and into her lap when recalling her first kiss. That amazing first kiss that had vibrated her very soul.

This couldn’t be happening to her. Ben couldn’t be gone. They still had a future together. They needed to have lots of children that looked just like him.

He just couldn’t be gone forever.

**********

The doctor arrived late that night, and he shooed Toni out of the room while he saw to Erik. Toni grudgingly did so, but sat outside the door of her room, waiting. Every once in a while Erik would cry out in pain and she would bolt to her feet. What was the doctor doing to him?

“Boss?” Wade’s voice came from the door.

She looked up at him.

“We’re gonna plant Ben by your daughter, is that okay?” Wade asked.

Toni was struck dumb. Ben was dead?

“He’s dead?”

“I’m afraid so. We have the assailants, too. They‘re all dead.”

“No” Toni whimpered, sinking lower to the floor. “He never hurt anybody. He shouldn‘t have been the one to…” Her voice trailed off.

“I’m sorry, Boss” Wade said.

“Poor Katie. Where is she?” Toni asked.

“She went with Tiny out to the grave site,” Wade answered.

“You can bury him beside Libby. I don’t mind” Toni said. “I wish I could come, but the Doc is with Erik now. I want to see those men before you plant them, though.”

“We understand” Wade walked back out with a shovel slung over his shoulder.

Toni waited and waited. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the doctor came back out, drying his hands. Toni tried to look in and see Erik, but the Doc shut the door too fast. She sighed and looked at the man. “Well?”

“Well, he is one blessed man. You’re lucky that bullet only went just under the skin. He could have had spinal damage and been paralyzed or worse.”

“Then he’ll be okay?” Toni asked.

The doctor sighed. “I’m not sure. We’ll have to wait things out. I’ll sleep out in the bunkhouse for tonight. You make sure to come and get me if anything happens, okay? I’ve cleaned the wounds and medicated them, and you’ve managed to stop the bleeding, so we’re just going to have to wait. There could be damage I don’t know about, so you keep a close eye on him, okay?”

Toni nodded. “I’ll let him rest.”

The doctor nodded and carried his bag outside toward the bunkhouses. Toni quietly opened the door and looked at sleeping Erik, with a white bandage over his bare torso and veins bulging up and down his arms, most likely from the pain of what the doctor had just done to him. She had heard about the cleaning and medicating methods of doctors, and heard that they were very painful, but she had never had to endure one.

He lay there with his eyes closed and his breathing shallow but even. Every once in a while he would wince.

Toni sat beside him on the large bed and was careful not to disturb him as she set his Bible in her lap. Maybe if she knew more about his God, she would know better how to comfort him in his recovery.

If he did recover, that it.

She opened the Bible and on the front page laid a list of verses. Curiosity began to overtake her as she looked up each verse in turn.

I John 5:13 - These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.

John 5:24 - Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life

John 3:16 - For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life

No wonder he had wanted her to read John first. It had so many verses about being saved. Toni looked over at him. He just wanted her to believe in his God. She directed her attention back to the list.

Romans 12:12 - Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer

Jeremiah 29:11 - For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.

Deuteronomy 31:6- Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee

.

Toni sighed.

…Thoughts of peace, and not of evil…

Had God been the reason that Erik was still alive? That the bullet hadn’t hit his spine? Did God have his hand on Erik?

Ephesians 2:8 - For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

Galatians 2:20 - I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

Toni leaned back and thought. Maybe all of this time she had been wrong about God. What If he was just trying to help her find Him? What if He had been taking care of her all these years and she just didn’t realize it?

She let the Bible fall open in her lap and looked down at a verse that caught her eye.

Jeremiah 33:6 - Behold, I will bring it health and cure, and I will cure them, and will reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth.

She needed to pray. She needed to ask God for healing because He was the only one who could give it. She saw the truth in the way Erik lived, in the fact that he was laying beside her living and breathing.

She finally understood.

How was she supposed to come about this, though?

…that whosoever believeth…

She had heard Wade talking before about this. She had heard him talk about how a person needed to admit that they were a sinner and come to God begging for forgiveness.

With shaking hands and trembling knees, Toni gently knelt beside the bed and folded her hands, just as she had done when she was a child.

“Lord? Umm… I’m coming before you knowing that I ain’t nothin’ special. I reckon I’ve sinned just like everyone else. Maybe even worse. I’ve killed a man once, and I’ve gotta filthy mouth on me. I’ve been a complete idiot about Erik, and about my Uncle Mark. I’m having a hard time forgiving that man, too. I’m just gonna face it - I treat people like dirt and that’s all there is to it” She took a deep, trembling breath. “But I don’t want to be that person anymore. I wanna be like Erik and Wade and be completely forgiven of everything I’ve ever done in my whole life. Lord, I ain’t sayin’ that I’ll be perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but if you’ll forgive me I’ll sure try” Toni lifted her head feeling like she had nothing to ever weight her down again. She felt as if she didn’t have to fear of anything ever again.

What if she didn’t do it right? What if this was psychological?

Toni decided that she would ask Erik when he woke up. If he woke up, that is. She spent the next hour praying to God for Erik’s healing and begging God to hear her. All that was left now what waiting for God’s will to be done.