The Texan's Wager by Thomas Jodi

Author:Thomas, Jodi [Thomas, Jodi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Fiction, Western, Historical, General
ISBN: 9780515134001
Publisher: Jove
Published: 2001-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

"LITTLE MOTHER? LITTLE MOTHER. YOU WAKE UP now?"

Bailee tried to open her eyes at the sound of someone talking, but they were glued closed with fear. She rocked to the movements of the train. The air was thick with smoke and the smells of a barn. Slowly memory returned, but when she forced her eyes open, all she could see were shadows moving above her.

A wrinkled hand patted her shoulder. "You all right, Little Mother? We take good care of your child."

Bailee pulled herself up to a sitting position and tried to see through the darkness. Pale, watery moonlight squeezed between the wood that formed the walls of the smelly freight car. A light flickered at the far end. Hazy forms huddled along the fringes, unclear, unidentified. "Piper?" she whispered, feeling as if her mouth were as full of straw as her clothing. The odor of damp hay and cow manure thickened the air.

"She is fine." A thin man, wearing a hat almost as wide as his shoulders, answered. "Bullet only skid across her shoulder and arm. Bled a great deal, but she will live with only a scar and her memories."

The old man helped Bailee to her feet, and they walked slowly across the car to where Piper rested in the lap of a woman layered in rags. The child's arm was in a sling made from a multicolored scarf. White bandages replaced the top part of her dress over one shoulder and arm.

"She not say a word," he whispered as Piper turned her pale face toward Bailee and smiled. "We use the nightgown in her little bag to make the wrap for her wounds. Even as we work, she never cry out."

"She can't hear or speak," Bailee whispered as she brushed her hand over the dressing. "And she's not my daughter; she lost her mother in a train wreck a few days ago." Bailee knew she shouldn't be telling the little man so much, but she had to trust him. She owed these people her life. If one of them hadn't grabbed her from inside the car when she jumped toward the opening, she never would have made it.

The man spoke to the woman in a language Bailee couldn't understand.

Bailee closed her fingers around Piper's hand, wishing her words true as she told Piper they were safe now. No one would be shooting at them again, Bailee mouthed slowly.

"My wife says"—the man in the hat smiled—"the child has the gift of silence. A rare gift indeed. Think of all she must hear with the world stepping back."

Bailee thought labeling Piper's lack of hearing a gift was a strange way to look at it. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the other faces lined along the walls of the car. They were clustered in families, holding to one another for warmth. Fathers trying to block the rain seeping through the cracks from their wives and children. Mothers cuddling their little ones close, using their skirts to blanket them. All were dressed in an odd mixture of rags and brightly colored scarves.

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