Faith and Love Found by Claudia Hope Read Free Book Online

otherwise.”
    Clint looked at her in disbelief, but she just gave him a small smile and walked over to what she’d dropped near his head. Unable to watch, he just listened to her rustle around with a few things and then started wrapping leather straps under his armpits and around his chest.
    “What are you doing?” he asked.
    “I have to get you back to the house. Set your leg. Where’s the cattle?”
    “Gone. Back to the house? You can’t lift me.”
    “I don’t need to lift you.”
    “Stop,” he said, more out of fear of the pain that would come from being moved than anything. “Just stop. I don’t need your help.”
    Suddenly her face took up his entire vision. “No? You don’t? Like with that snake? You’ll turn into a corpse out here, and I’d have to drag you anyway. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather do it before you start stinking.”
    “I don’t need your help,” he said again, trying to undo the straps. How had she done this so quickly? They were tight, and he couldn’t figure out how they were attached. There were no knots.
    Suddenly he was in the air, the pain in his back and leg exploding to unbelievable levels. He reached back to try and stop her, but then he was being dragged. One step at a time, she pulled him from the pens and back to the house. Getting dragged up the steps of the porch was the worst part all the way until they reached his room. For a moment she paused, panting, struggling to breathe.
    “What is it?” he asked, his own breathing coming his short, fast gasps. Sweat poured down his face, the cold frigid kind that came from mountainous amounts of pain.
    “The bed,” she said. “Trying to think… of how to get… you into it.”
    Clint tried to take a few deep breaths. Just control the breathing; that was the key. “Get me close. I’ll push myself up with my good leg. Remember the chest and the cart?”
    “You want me to climb over your bed and pull you up? Clint, that’s going to be too much.”
    “Yes, but we don’t have a choice.”
    He bounced as she readjusted him. Then, two strong steps, she pulled him forward till he was right next to his bed. Taking his cue, he pulled his good leg under him and pushed himself to standing. His back nearly crushed itself under his own weight, but then Valentine was already over his bed and pulling him up onto it. Together, they got him onto the mattress. When the back of his knee hit the mattress, he cried out as his entire body went rigid. One last pull and Valentine had him up on the bed. She hopped down the other side, came around the foot of the bed, and got him situated on the bed properly.
    Even through the pain, he noted the stoic firmness she used as she moved him. She wasn’t rough, but nor was she squeamish about his cries of pain.
    “I’ll be back,” she said sharply and marched from the room.
    All he could do was lie there, shaking from the pain, sweating bullets down his face. His shirt stuck to his torso, and everything from the waist down felt like it was being dragged through broken, sharp stones. Valentine’s boots pounded along the hardwood floor as she stomped from room to room like an angel of death on a mission.
    As she came back into the room, she produced a knife and came at him with it. Clint brought up his hands to fight her off, his addled mind unable to comprehend what was happening. Slapping his hands away as though he were a child, she brought the edge of the blade to his pants and sliced the pantleg cleanly down his leg. Peeling the canvas pants from the wound, she hissed as she saw the full damage.
    “That’ll have to be set, but it can wait. For now we have to deal with the bleeding.”
    “What? Set? We need to get the Doc.”
    Valentine looked at him and shook her head. “No need. I know what to do.”
    “H-How?”
    “I wasn’t born on that train, you know. I led an entire life before I met you.”
    “I—“ he tried to say, but a crash of anguish swept over him,