The Heart of a Stranger

The human shadow didn’t move. But she did. Slowly, cautiously, silently cursing the shuffle of her timeworn boots.

She peered around the view-obstructing pallet and caught her breath.

The intruder, a broad-shouldered man slumped against the wall, was in no condition to fend off an attack, not even by an adrenaline-pumped female wielding metal prongs.

He was already bruised and bleeding.

She moved closer. He’d been beaten, pummeled, she presumed, by hard-hitting fists. His rumpled clothes, a denim shirt and a pair of jeans, bore signs of a struggle. Had his face taken the brunt of the beating? Or had he sustained other injuries, as well?

She knelt at his side, and for a moment their gazes locked.

Then she realized he fought to stay conscious, battling for the strength to hang on.

Lourdes abandoned the hay hook and pressed her hand to his forehead. His skin was hot and damp.

Without thinking, she smoothed the front of his thick, dark hair away from his face, the way a mother would soothe a fevered child’s brow.

He squinted. One of his eyes nearly swelled shut. Streaks of dirt and dried blood camouflaged his face, smearing below his nose and across his cheeks, where he’d apparently wiped the mixture with a telltale sleeve.

How long had he been in the barn? All night? Or had he taken refuge early this morning?

She had to get him inside, into a safe, warm bed. Cáco would know what to do. Her surrogate grandmother was a healer, practiced in the art of ancient medicine.

Suddenly a sensible voice in her head cautioned: Don’t bring a stranger into your home. Don’t invite trouble. Pawn him off on an ambulance instead.

And offend Cáco? Some of the Indians in the area lived and breathed by the Comanche woman’s healings.

But she doubted this man was Indian. He looked—

What? Latino? Greek? Italian? A combination thereof?

Did it matter? Cáco would insist on taking him under her wing nonetheless.

Lourdes went to the granary door and called out to Amy, Cáco’s biological granddaughter, a city girl who stayed at the ranch during her school breaks.

Amy appeared almost instantly. After Lourdes led her to the stranger, the teenager practically swallowed the wad of gum in her mouth.

Although Amy was the descendant of a long line of medicine women, the girl blanched. “Who is he?” she asked, with wide-eyed horror.

“I don’t know. But we have to take him to Cáco.” Before he passes out, Lourdes thought.

Gauging the man’s bulk, Amy made a worried face. “Can he walk?”

“I hope so. At least as far as the truck.” Lourdes knelt beside the stranger again. He probably weighed two hundred pounds. Carrying him was out of the question.

“Can you walk?” she asked him, echoing Amy’s concern. When he didn’t respond, she added, “If we help?”

He blinked, then nodded, his gaze not quite focused.

Getting him on his feet proved the most difficult, but once he was up, Lourdes and Amy refused to let go. They kept their arms around his waist, encouraging him to lean on them for support. Sandwiched between them, he stood at least six-three, hulking like a bruised and battered giant.

Lourdes prayed he didn’t give up and fall to the ground, taking her and Amy with him. Already the teenager’s narrow shoulders sagged from his weight. Lourdes wasn’t faring much better. His unsteady steps put her off balance, making her weave like a tanked-up cowboy on a saloon-slumming night.

They helped him into the truck, and he landed on the bench seat and slumped against Lourdes as she climbed in beside him.

From this proximity, the stranger’s sweat-dampened skin mingled with the faint, metallic smell of blood, creating a dark and dangerous pheromone.

Everything about him seemed dark and dangerous—his olive skin, those midnight-colored eyes, the blackish-brown hair Lourdes had smoothed across his brow.

She gave Amy the keys to the pickup, and the fifteen-year-old accepted them eagerly, making use of her driver learner’s permit.

The young girl clutched the steering wheel, lead-footing the Ford across the terrain, popping her gum with each jarring bump. Lourdes didn’t ask her to slow down. A half-conscious man seemed like a good excuse to speed.

The desertlike air blasted through the open window, fanning Lourdes’s face with heat. She wondered if the feverish man could feel it, too.

Amy stopped at the house, killed the engine and tore off, racing through the back door for her grandmother.

“We should wait here,” Lourdes said to the stranger, knowing the anxious teenager hadn’t given them a choice.

She certainly couldn’t haul him up the scattered-stone walkway herself.

Cáco, a robust woman with a gray-streaked bun, finally appeared. Her cotton dress flurried around her, billowing in the breeze.

Lourdes had never been so happy to see Cáco.

“Amy is looking after your daughters,” the older lady said as she opened the truck, informing her that all of the youngsters, including the gum-smacking teenager, had been gently shooed away.

Lourdes nodded and stepped aside, giving Cáco access to the injured man.

First the Comanche woman gazed steadily into his eyes, and then she ran deft fingers through his hair, cupping the back of his head. As she found a tender spot, he flinched.

“Someone must have hit you with a blunt object. That’s why you’re so dizzy,” she told him. “Do you think you can stay on your feet until we get you inside?”

He nodded, and even though the effort cost him, he remained upright. But the moment, the very instant Lourdes and Cáco guided him to an empty bed, he pitched forward, losing the consciousness he’d been fighting all along.

The stranger wasn’t out for long. He came to with Cáco checking his vital signs. Testing his basic brain functions, she evaluated the size of his pupils and their reaction to light. He didn’t appear to pass the memory tests. He answered her questions with jumbled words.

“Watch him,” she told Lourdes. “Call me if he loses consciousness again. I’m going to boil a root mixture.”

“All right.” Lourdes kept a bedside vigil.

The stranger rolled over, moaned and grabbed a pillow. Too tall for the double bed, his booted feet draped over the edge.

His partially untucked shirt bore a torn sleeve and two missing buttons at the hem, Lourdes noticed, and his Wranglers were stained, as well. They rode a bit too low on his hips. Someone had nearly beaten the life out of him, and his clothes had gotten tugged and tattered in the scuffle.

Cáco finally came back and placed a basin of water and a stack of washcloths on a functional nightstand. The guest room was small and tidy, with paneled walls, braided area rugs and a gold-veined mirror, depicting the era in which Lourdes had been born.

She glanced at the bed and wondered how old the injured man was. Thirtysomething, she suspected.