Jake's Angel

“I’m not clumsy!”

“You are! You couldn’t hit a whole barn if it was a foot in front of you!”

“Nate…” Isabel began, warning him off before a full-fledged battle could ensue.

“Oh, Matt, you’re such a baby,” Nate said, kicking at the dirt with the toe of his boot. “You just can’t aim, that’s all. But I knew you could heal it, Mama, so we ran all the way back home.”

“You did just the right thing, Nate. Now both of you, please be still while I finish or you’ll startle this little one. Here, Matt, you can help me. Gently now…”

Fixing her eyes on the bird, Isabel reached into the basket at her side, being careful not to make any quick movements that would startle the small creature. She sensed its pain and fear, and, even more strongly, Matt’s distress, and wanted to do something to quickly ease both.

In a worn leather pouch, she found a bit of lizard tail root. She spread it on a piece of cotton and added a dribble of water from a small bottle before folding the cloth into a square.

Then taking Matt’s small hand in hers, she guided him to caress the bird’s head and body while she bound the poultice to the bird’s wing with a strip of cloth.

“Speak quietly to her. There…that’s right…”

“You’ll soon be well, little bird, and running with your friends again,” Matt whispered. He began to hum softly to the roadrunner, one of his favorite bedtime lullabies.

Isabel smiled, watching him pet and soothe the bird. After a few minutes, she felt the timid creature settle easily into her hand, its heartbeat slowing, its eyes no longer frightened. Her greater reward, though, was seeing the beginning of hope on Matt’s face.

“It looks better. Is it?”

“Much. She’s only bruised. She just needs a little rest, that’s all.”

“I think she likes me.”

“She likes your touch,” Isabel said, watching Matt stroke the roadrunner’s sleek feathers. “And that’s one of the most important parts of healing. You are doing it exactly right. In a few days, I promise you, she’ll be running with the wind again.”

“Can we take her home until then? Please, Mama?”

“Matt, we have so many of your wounded animal friends at home we need another house just to keep them all.” Isabel relented at the pleading on Matt’s face, unable to deny him. “All right,” she agreed, smoothing back an unruly lock of his hair, smiling. “She can stay a few days, until she’s fully healed. Now, I should take this little one inside and you should get on to the meeting house before Aunt Katlyn misses you for lessons.”

Making sure they had their books and lunch pails, Isabel hugged them both, then watched them scamper off in the direction of the rustic cabin that served as both community center and schoolhouse. She gathered up the roadrunner and rose to her feet, smiling a little at her boys’ energy and their faith in her healing skills.

Matthew and Nathan were all she had left of her marriage—the best part, she’d decided.

Douglas Bradshaw hadn’t left her much when he decided the promise of gold, whiskey and women in California appealed more than a series of failed prospecting ventures and raising a family in Whispering Creek. Isabel could admit now that her marriage to Douglas had been a farce from the beginning. He’d wanted someone to nurse him through a bad bout of influenza, to clean, cook and care for his stepsons after his wife died. And she’d longed for someone to love, to give her the complete family she’d never had.

She had trusted him with her dreams and he had lied to her.

But this past winter, with snow piled to the windows and the smokehouse and root cellar practically empty, when the high country was at its fiercest, the torn and smudged letter arrived telling her Douglas had died in a drunken fight with another miner.

In that moment she remembered very little of the caring she once felt for him. Regret, yes, that Matthew and Nathan had not only lost both their parents but a man they thought would be a father, and a lingering ache at Douglas’s abandonment. But in her heart, Isabel had been a widow since the day just over a year ago when Douglas left suddenly after telling her he couldn’t stomach the prospect of a lifetime stuck in Whispering Creek with her, her grandmother, and his late wife’s children.

But of all the regrets she had about her marriage, Isabel never rued Douglas’s leaving behind his two stepsons. She might not have birthed them, but in her heart Matt and Nate were no less her own. Along with her grandmother and her half sister Katlyn, they were part of her family now and she would do whatever it took to raise them right in the town where they had lived all their lives.

That was why after Douglas left, she’d decided to use part of the house she’d inherited for business, offering her skills as a healer and herbalist. The upstairs loft room she rented to boarders or used as a shelter to those needing a place to rest or recover from injury or illness, or to those who simply had nowhere else to go in Whispering Creek.

Overall, the rambling house was humble, but it afforded her a means to keep food on the table without the help of any man. And that, she determined after Douglas’s leaving, was something she would never allow herself to need again.

Nothing would ever force her to give up her home. And nothing would ever persuade her to risk her heart again for the sake of a dream.

Holding the roadrunner gently in the crook of her arm, Isabel walked around to the back of her cabin, to the small garden there, looking for one of the baskets she used for gathering herbs and vegetables that might serve as a temporary home for Matt’s new boarder.

A harsh cawk greeted her and she looked up to where a large raven sat perched on the edge of the garden fence, eyeing her with an unblinking stare.

“Hello, Trouble,” she called.

“Hello, hello!” the raven croaked. “Cookies, please!”

Isabel laughed, knowing Trouble had learned the phrase from Matt and Nate after following her boys into the kitchen so many times. In fact, his uncanny ability to sneak inside and wreak all manner of havoc had led Nate to give him his apt name.

“Ah, is Nana baking again? I promise, I’ll save one for you and you can share with the boys this afternoon.”

Isabel was still smiling a little to herself when she stepped in the door, lost in her thoughts, not expecting to find anyone in the kitchen at this time of the morning.

The moment the door closed behind her, though, her grandmother pounced on her with a triumphant cry.

“Isabel! At last!”

The old woman’s sudden motion set the dozen strings of varied colored beads she wore swaying and clattering. Tall and scraggy with a snarl of black-and-silver hair, Esme Castillo looked as if her body and face had been roughly hewn from old wood. She gripped a long serving fork in one hand, brandishing it like a sword in Isabel’s direction.

“What is that?” Esme asked flatly, stabbing the fork at the roadrunner. “No, no, no—do not tell me. It is another of Matthew’s orphans. Ay, why do I ask? I should know we will never be rid of these creatures!”

“Oh, Nana, you know I can never say no to someone in need,” Isabel said, laughing. She settled the roadrunner into a small basket by the stove. “Besides, there aren’t that many creatures here.”

“A lizard, a desert rat, a very ugly squirrel, a raven with the tongue of the devil, and now—this! Soon we will have no room for your human orphans.”

“Oh, we’ll find room. And you’ll do as you always do with our guests, slip treats to each and every creature and human when you think no one is looking.” Isabel smiled at Esme’s scowl, then gave her grandmother a quick hug, kissing her cheek. The old woman huffed a bit, making a show of despising any kind of fuss over her, but Isabel saw the satisfied twinkle in her eyes.

“I could put her in Mr. Davis’s room,” she teased Esme, glancing at the roadrunner. “His arm has healed and he told me this morning he’s moving out today to try his luck in Nevada.” Isabel sighed then, her tone losing its humor. “I suppose it means looking for another boarder.”

Esme shrugged. “It will not be difficult. Most of the prospectors would rather have something more than a bedroll and camp food. And ay, that food! I would as soon as eat boiled owls and rat dung than the poison that man over at Lone Gulch mine who calls himself a cook prepares!”

“Well, you look as if you’re preparing for a feast here.”

Isabel waved a hand at the disarray of pots, serving vessels and utensils, various piles of half-readied corn and beans, and raw slabs of goat meat. A chaos of smells permeated the long, narrow room, from the sweet richness of chocolate, to the sharp burn of red and green chilies, combined with various scents of odd and familiar herbs.

Esme helped with the cooking for the family and the boarders as far as she was still able. But when she was angry or upset she attacked the kitchen with a vengeance, soothing her frayed temper by turning out large elaborate meals or concocting one of her seemingly endless potions or remedies.

Glancing at her grandmother, Isabel saw the expression in Esme’s heavy-lidded eyes was shuttered, giving her her usual air of hoarding a great secret. Esme walked over to the black monstrosity of a stove and began vigorously stirring a pot of soup.

“Sheriff Reed, he comes here today to tell me about some robberies nearby. As close as the La Belle, Anchor and Midnight City mines he says. These robberies…” Esme drew a long breath. She turned from her cooking to look at Isabel, her face softening with concern. “The sheriff says they remind him of that man you knew as a girl.”

Isabel shook her head, glancing away, not willing to see the questions in Esme’s eyes. “Of course it isn’t him. It’s been so long, why would he ever come back here?”

“My child, we have all heard the stories that most of the gold he stole from the mining camps around Taos County is hidden in the mountains near here.” Esme hesitated then added, “And of course he always told everyone he cared for you, although I could never believe it of a man like that.”