Desert Hearts Read Free Page B

alive, Lieutenant.”
    Lieutenant Thomas Woolcott dismounted and walked over to kneel beside the girl. Her eyes opened when he touched her arm. She seemed to be looking at him, but he wasn’t sure if she was seeing him.
    “Are you hurt anywhere, miss,” he asked gently.
    The girl seemed to be listening the way she was looking; she was there and not there at the same time.
    “She’s in shock, Lieutenant. I’ve seen it before after an Indian raid.”
    “This wasn’t no Indians,” said their scout, who was walking around carefully. “Boots, not moccasins, for one thing. And we’re too far from the Navajo, and the Jicarilla haven’t done any raiding for the past year. Comancheros, from the look of things. Worse than any tribe I know.”
    Elizabeth Jane started shivering when she saw one of the soldiers approach her mother’s body. Lieutenant Woolcott moved himself in front of her and rubbed her back rhythmically. “Get me something to put over her,” he whispered to the trooper standing closest to him.
    The man found a wool shawl in the wagon and Woolcott draped it over Elizabeth Jane’s shoulders.
    It was Mama’s best shawl and it smelled like her: a combination of milled soap and rosewater cologne. It was the scent of roses that did it. It brought her mother to life and Elizabeth Jane could hear her voice, see her dabbing the cologne behind her ears. Great wrenching sobs racked her and the lieutenant wrapped his arms around her.
    “That’s the way, miss. Just let it all out.”
    She cried until she had no more tears and then she slept. By the time she awoke, it was dark and the fire was lit. She looked around for her father and then remembered; her parents were dead, her brother gone, and the soldiers were here to keep her safe.
    The bodies were gone, she realized. She saw the lieutenant studying the fire, a cup of coffee in his hand, and she pulled herself up and went over to him.
    “You are awake then, miss,” he said kindly.
    “Yes, sir. My name is Rush. Elizabeth Jane Rush.”
    “Well, Elizabeth Jane Rush, you have had a hard time of it. Where was your family headed? Do you have any relatives in the territory?”
    “We left everyone behind, Captain. We were headed for Arizona by way of Santa Fe.”
    “Only ‘Lieutenant,’ ” he corrected her with a smile. “Lieutenant Thomas Woolcott. Where are you from, Miss Rush?”
    “Boston.”
    “And do you have family there?”
    “Only my grandfather.”
    “Then we will see you safe into Santa Fe and make sure you get back home.”
    “Oh, no, I don’t want to go back to Grandfather’s,” she said immediately. “He wouldn’t know what to do with me. And he wasn’t very happy with Papa when we left.”
    “Hmmmm.” Thomas Woolcott looked down at the girl by his side. She was over the initial shock, he could tell, and seemed to know what she didn’t want to do. “But where will you go, Miss Rush? You are only a girl.”
    “I am fourteen, Lieutenant. Really almost a young lady.”
    “Santa Fe is hardly the place for a young lady from back East.”
    “Isn’t there some school where I could work? Or seam-stressing? I can sew very well, Lieutenant.”
    She was almost grown , thought Thomas Woolcott, having felt her soft curves when he had pulled her to his side to comfort her. He was ashamed of himself for even thinking about a fourteen-year-old that way, but there was something about the way she had composed herself and was trying to deal calmly with the horror that life had handed her that drew him.
    “I have a sister in Santa Fe, Miss Rush. She is a widow with three small children and from what I’ve seen of them, could use some help. I could see if Nellie could take you in and you could try it out for a while. Then, if you change your mind, I can see that you get back to Boston.”
    Elizabeth Jane turned to him, her eyes full of relief and gratitude. “Thank you very much, Lieutenant Woolcott. If your sister is willing, I would like to