IRONHEART Read online

  Sara nearly ran around the corner, then halted in horror at the sight of her grandfather lying in a pool of blood. "Oh my God…" she said in a whisper.

  "He's breathing okay," Gideon said softly. "Sara, he's alive, just unconscious. The bleeding has stopped, so it's been a while and they're probably gone, but I need to check…"

  Sara nodded and came swiftly to kneel beside her grandfather. This was no time for horror or any other feeling. Right now there were things that needed to be done. She had to draw a couple of deep breaths to steady herself, but she managed to find a core of internal calm. "Okay."

  Gideon gripped her shoulder briefly, then started up the stairs. Sara's gaze followed his prowling movements until he disappeared. Then she looked down at her grandfather and started praying.

  Gideon was back in under three minutes. "They were up there," he said, "but they're gone now. What's faster? Calling for help or driving Zeke to the hospital?"

  Sara looked up bleakly, measuring minutes in her mind. "Call the sheriff's office and tell them we need the medevac flight. Then we'll need to position my Blazer to illuminate a landing pad and guide the chopper in."

  * * *

  The nearest patrolling sheriff's unit arrived in the yard in under ten minutes. Gideon went out to the porch to greet the deputy and found himself face-to-face with Micah Parish.

  Damn, thought Gideon, the man was even bigger than he'd realized, at least two inches taller than Gideon, and built of solid muscle. And Parish's eyes were familiar, so familiar that Gideon felt his stomach knot.

  "You must be Ironheart," Micah said. "Where's Sara?"

  Gideon stepped aside, letting the deputy see Sara kneeling beside her grandfather. "He's hurt pretty badly, from what I can tell."

  Micah nodded and brushed past, going to Sara's side, where he squatted and gripped her shoulder. "The chopper'll be here in just a couple of minutes, Sara," he said. "Yuma said to tell you that old Huey is going to break speed records."

  Sara tilted her head and gave Micah a wan smile. "Thanks, Micah."

  "Ironheart and I are going to position the Blazers so they can see where to set down. Where are your keys?"

  "Top drawer of my dresser."

  "I'll get them," Gideon said.

  Sara glanced up at him. "Thanks."

  Micah and Gideon parked the Blazers facing each other with the wide expanse of hard-packed yard between them, providing a flat, lighted area for the helicopter to set down on. They turned on the flashers of both vehicles so the pilot could use them as a guide.

  "Who's Yuma?" Gideon asked Micah as the two of them listened for the whop-whop that would signal the Huey's approach. What he really wanted to ask was how Micah had known who he was. Had Sara mentioned him? Or had Micah heard that Gideon was asking about him around town?

  "The best damn chopper pilot this side of the Mekong," Parish said.

  Gideon had heard that kind of remark before from men and was easily able to fill in all the unspeakable blanks that arose from Vietnam.

  Suddenly Parish's dark eyes riveted him. "You a vet?"

  "Marines."

  "Nam?"

  "I was there during the evacuation."

  For a moment Micah's black-as-night eyes seemed to impale him. "I missed that," he said finally. "Damn filthy duty."

  So filthy it had given Gideon an unalterable distaste for military life, but all he said was, "Yeah. Filthy."

  The distinctive whopping of the Huey drew their attention to the east and the approaching helicopter. With navigation and landing lights on, the Huey was highly visible against the star-strewn sky.

  Yuma set the Huey down as gently as a feather. Two medics piled out of the side bay doors, carrying a back board between them as Micah pointed to the front door.

  Yuma climbed out, too, and crossed the dirt toward Micah. He was a moderately tall, lean man who walked with a limp and had a face that looked as if it had been ravaged by nightmares. Deep lines scored it, and hell looked out of his eyes, Gideon thought. He'd seen that look before. Some nightmares never ended.

  "I spotted two more units on the road headed this way," Yuma told Micah. "They'll be here within five minutes."

  Micah nodded approval. "Good,"

  "How's Sara?"

  Micah shook his head. "Stunned. She'll go with you."

  "Of course. I've got room." He gave a nod to Gideon, then limped back to the helicopter to be ready to take off as soon as the patient was loaded.

  Micah looked at Gideon. "I want you to stay here. You can help us check things out."

  Reluctantly, Gideon nodded. His impulse was to go with Sara, to be there if she needed anything, but he understood the deputy's concern. Someone had to be here to show the cops around and to answer questions.

  He watched them carry Zeke carefully out and load him into the helicopter. Sara didn't even glance toward Gideon. Of course not. She had room for only one thing on her mind right now.

  He watched the helicopter lift off with a roar of its engines and stared after it as it shrank into the distance. And he realized, quite suddenly, just how much an old Shoshone Indian had come to mean to him.

  "Let's go," said Micah in the sudden silence left behind by the chopper. "Show me what you saw and walk me through exactly what you and Sara did. Start at the beginning."

  So he started at the beginning.

  * * *

  Sara shivered and drew her denim jacket closer around her. It wasn't really chilly in the waiting room, but the early hour made her feel cold.

  In the past several hours she had experienced a whole gamut of emotions and had finally reached a plateau of relative calm resulting mainly from weariness. Now she waited only to hear whether they needed to send her grandfather to a larger hospital where he could receive more specialized care. Zeke hadn't come to yet, and a neurologist from Laramie was consulting over the phone with Dr. MacArdle, trying to determine the seriousness of Zeke's injuries.

  Her hands knotted into fists deep within her pockets, and she closed her eyes against the sting of tears. She really didn't know how she would stand it if her grandfather didn't recover. She simply couldn't imagine life without Zeke's warm humor and steady support. The ache that image brought was nearly intolerable.

  "Sara?"

  She looked up through a blur of tears and saw Gideon standing uncertainly in the doorway. Her throat was too tight to speak, and she could only make a small, almost helpless gesture to acknowledge him.

  It was enough. He closed the distance between them in two long strides, then sat beside her and gathered her into his arms. "Oh, baby," he said softly. "Oh, baby…" He pressed her cheek to his chest and rocked her gently, listening to her swallow again and again as she fought her tears.

  Even through her worry and grief, Sara felt a dim sense of astonishment at how ready Gideon was to hold her comfortingly. The men she worked with would have offered an awkward pat to the shoulder and a few gruff words of concern. And that was all she would have expected.

  He didn't offer any false hopes or assurances. Not once did he say it was okay or would be all right. Because both of them knew it wasn't okay and might never be all right.

  She drew a few shaky breaths and managed finally to subdue the urge to cry. The weary calm returned, a muffling blanket.

  "What do they say?" Gideon asked presently.

  "They don't know for sure. Zeke is stable but unconscious, and Dr. MacArdle is consulting by phone with a neurologist. They may have to move him to a bigger hospital."

  Gideon nodded, forgetting that she couldn't see the gesture with her cheek pressed to his chest. Stable but unconscious, and seventy-plus years old. Zeke was in great shape, and probably as tough as old shoe leather, but he was also getting on in years. How much could he stand?

  * * *

  It would have been impossible, Gideon thought, for minutes to move any more slowly without time coming to a complete halt. It had been like this the night his own grandfather had died, he reme
mbered. His uncle had called him to tell him the old man wouldn't make it through the night. Seven hours and three connecting flights later, Gideon had sat in a room something like this and waited as the minutes dragged by.

  His grandfather, he thought now, should never have been in the hospital. It hadn't been the place for a man who had devoted the better part of his adult life to healing through the old ways. Yet Adam Lightfoot had never mocked the white men's medicine, he remembered.

  "You can't heal the body unless you heal the spirit, too," the old man had told him. "Anglo medicine heals the body, and heals it well, but the people keep getting sick because the spirit is forgotten."

  Another one of those things that Gideon hadn't really heard until it was too late. The spirit is forgotten. He felt as if his own had not only been forgotten, but lost somewhere, as well.

  Sara sat in her corner of the couch, folding into herself with her shoulders hunched and her hands tucked up under her jacket. She looked so small and lost right now, nothing like the deputy who'd saved his butt from that gang of red-necks.

  "How about some coffee?" he suggested, and glanced at his watch. A little after three. No place would be open right now, so it would have to be the vending machine. "I'll get it," he said, when she didn't answer. "Be right back."

  The machine was only a short way down the hall. He leaned against it, resting his forehead against his fist as he watched the stream of coffee pour into the disposable cup. When it was done, he moved it to one side and shoved his hand into his jeans pocket, looking for a couple more quarters.

  "Here," said a deep, gravelly voice behind him, and quarters were slipped into the slot. "You must be Ironheart."

  Gideon straightened slowly and turned to face a ruddy, stocky man of maybe forty-five. He wore ordinary jeans, a zipped-up nylon jacket and a battered straw cowboy hat. "That's my name," he agreed, thinking he had seen this man somewhere from a distance.

  "I'm Nate Tate," the man said. "Sheriff Nate Tate."

  Ah! thought Gideon. At last the inquisition. "Pleased to meet you."

  "I've been hearing about you here and there," Tate said noncommittally. "You planning on staying awhile?"

  "Awhile. At least until Zeke is better. Sara doesn't seem to have a whole lot of help."

  Tate's unwinking gaze raked him from head to foot. "Sara's never had a lot of help, not since her ma died. And she doesn't need any more trouble than she's got."

  "I'm not planning on making any."

  After a moment Tate nodded. "She's here, I imagine."

  "In the waiting room."

  "Well, get the coffee, son, and let's go."

  Feeling that he had passed the first hurdle with the sheriff, Gideon followed him into the waiting room.

  "Nate!" As soon as she saw him, Sara rose to her feet. And then she hesitated, clearly uncertain whether he was here as her boss or her friend.

  Nate settled it. "I'm sorry, Sara. I just heard." Closing the distance between them, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "How's he doing?"

  "We don't really know yet. He's stable, but he won't … wake up." Her voice trembled a little and then recovered.

  Nate gave her a little squeeze and let her go. Gideon offered her one of the cups of coffee, and she accepted it with a wan smile of thanks before returning her attention to Nate. "What have you found?"

  "Not a whole hell of a lot, I'm afraid. Micah says it looks as if nothing was stolen, but very definitely as if they were looking for something. Something big, because they didn't bother opening any drawers, but they checked out all the rooms in your house, the bunkhouse and the barn. Maybe the most suspicious thing is that they left the valuables alone."

  "I don't have any valuables."

  "Ironheart here does," Nate said. When Sara plopped back down onto the couch, Nate sat in a chair across from her. "According to Micah, they passed on a Zuni belt buckle that's worth a small fortune and a few other things of that kind."

  Gideon shifted uneasily, not sure he liked the way that sounded. "A lot of people don't have any notion of the value of Zuni jewelry. Or of Indian jewelry as a whole."

  Nate nodded. "I realize that. It's still funny. Micah said something about a dirt biker you saw earlier?"

  "I didn't exactly see him. I saw sun glint off metal or glass, and when I headed up toward the trees to investigate, he took off. It sounded like a dirt bike, or a small motorcycle."

  "There might not be any connection," Nate said after a moment. He looked at Sara. "Anyhow, I need you to go through the house in the morning with one of the other deputies and tell me if anything is missing. You're the only one who can do that, Sara."

  She drew a long breath and nodded. "Okay. Unless something happens with my grandfather."

  "And you," Nate said, turning to Gideon. "I want you to show us exactly where that biker was. There has to be a reason Zeke Jackson is lying in a hospital bed right now, and no stone is going to be left unturned."

  That might almost be a threat, Gideon found himself thinking. If a man wanted to take it that way. "No problem," he said. "I can show you right where it's at. And what's more, unless one of your deputies poked around up there, it hasn't been disturbed, because Zeke and I didn't even bother to check it out once the biker was gone."

  Nate nodded approval. "Good."

  "Sara?" Dr. MacArdle entered the room looking rumpled, tired and concerned. Giving Nate and Gideon only the barest of nods, he went to sit beside Sara. "Your grandfather's condition hasn't changed at all. No, wait," he said when she opened her mouth. "Actually, that's a good sign at this point. If he'd suffered any kind of serious neurological injury, say a blood clot in the brain, we'd expect a deterioration of his neurological signs. That's not happening. Dr. Brandeis and I have decided to keep him here in intensive care for a while longer, unless something changes. In the meantime, why don't you get some sleep? We'll call you if anything changes."

  "You can stay with Marge and me," Nate said as MacArdle left the room. "We've got an extra bunk in Janet's room, now that Cindy's in college."

  Sara shook her head, thinking that the last thing she could tolerate right now was the well-meaning concern of friends. She would much rather just stay here and wait. "Thanks, Nate, but really, I'd rather not."

  "Holler if you change your mind." The sheriff rose, patted her shoulder and left.

  "I could get a room for you at the motel," Gideon said. "And I packed some of your clothes, in case. They're out in my truck. You can go get some sleep, and I'll sit right here and wait, and I'll call you the minute anything happens." He leaned over and touched her arm. "Mouse, that old man is going to wake up, probably in just a few hours, and it's not going to make him very happy to see you looking like this."

  Her eyes were blurring again, with tears and fatigue, and she didn't even argue when he drew her against his side and tucked her face to his shoulder.

  "Okay," he said. "Okay. You sleep right here, then. Sleep, baby. You won't miss a damn thing, I swear."

  * * *

  All her life, Sara had had to comfort others. Her father when her mother died, her brother when their father died. Friends who had lost loved ones. Survivors of accidents. The injured and battered innocents of the world. Looking back, she couldn't remember one time in her adult life when anyone at all had simply held her as Gideon Ironheart did through the endless predawn hours.

  She didn't see why he should do it. He had only entered her life a few short days ago, yet he seemed somehow to have taken root. Zeke really liked him, that was obvious. Something had clicked between the two men, almost as if they had been friends from another time.

  She could imagine them in another time, too, the old warrior and the younger one, dressed in buckskin, surveying the plains and mountains, riding free…

  She sighed and snuggled closer to Gideon. He was so warm, so hard, so big, so comforting. He made her feel safe, and Sara honestly couldn't remember the last time she had felt safe. It was an illusion, of course.
He was a tumbleweed, he'd said, moving on when the whim took him. But for right now he made her feel safe, and Sara was reluctant to fight a feeling she'd known so rarely.

  This afternoon, sitting in the kitchen when Zeke had mentioned the vision quest, she'd had the strangest feeling that her grandfather had a greater purpose than simply helping Gideon find a vision to guide him. Almost as if … as if he had wanted to pass something on to the younger man.

  What a crazy idea, she thought drowsily. What could possibly be passed on? An idea? A dream? A vision of … what? The future? She was aware that her grandfather had a mystical side to his nature, but it was something he kept closely private, because it was so intensely personal. Why had he mentioned such things to Gideon, whom he hardly knew?

  But then, Gideon was different. It didn't take a genius to feel his … difference, for lack of a better word. It wasn't exactly charisma, it wasn't exactly … anything. Just this sense of power, of invisible whirlwinds around him, of silent lightning and thunder. Things beyond normal ken.

  When she'd first met him, she had labeled him an "Indian with an attitude." But that wasn't it. Whatever it was that made a man face down ten other men rather than leave a place, whatever it was that made him take a stand rather than yield to overwhelming odds, was not an attitude. It might be foolish, it might even be suicidal, but it was also admirable.

  Her grandfather must have sensed these things, she thought, unconsciously snuggling closer, enjoying the way Gideon shifted to accommodate her, the way his arm tightened around her shoulders. His heartbeat beneath her ear was steady, comforting, and his breathing was slow and regular. Soothing.

  The gentle rise and fall of his chest was as relaxing as being rocked, and little by little she slipped into sleep.

  * * *

  "Sara? Sara, Zeke is awake."

  She was never sure afterward whether Gideon or Dr. MacArdle had roused her, but it really didn't matter. What did matter was that fifteen seconds later she was standing beside her grandfather's bed in intensive care, and he was smiling at her.

  That was when, for the first time, she realized just how old and frail Zeke really was. He was always so active, always so firm, that she hadn't really noticed, but now she did. He had aged considerably in the nine years since he had come to help her and Joey, and he was an old man now. She should be caring for him, not the other way around.