Faith and Love Found by Claudia Hope Read Free Book Online Page A

pulling the sounds from his mouth before they could form words.
    “This is going to be unpleasant,” she said as she pushed a length of fabric under his thigh and wrapped the pieces around. “Brace.”
    Clint’s hands flew above his head and grabbed onto the posts of the headboard. Valentine wrapped the fabric around her hands to ensure her grip didn’t slip, and then she pulled the tourniquet tight around his muscle. Clint cried out again, shaking his head with the need to act in some way against the pain.
    Despite it being tight, she gave it three sharp tugs and then knotted it. With another rag she dipped it in a bowl of water and spilled it over the wound. Cleaning it of the blood that had dried and clotted, she watched it for a few seconds. From his angle, he couldn’t see the damage, but if it looked anything like it felt, he thought maybe the fact he couldn’t see it wasn’t such a bad thing.
    “Now we set it?” he asked.
    “No.”
    “No?”
    “No, I have to go. I’ll be back.”
    “Go? You’re just going to leave me here like this?”
    Valentine put the rag in the bowl and set it on his clothes chest at the foot of his bed. “Priorities. Your life, the cattle, then the bone. The bone can wait. Not long, but it can wait. It’ll take time, and the cattle are escaping.”
    “But you don’t…” he said, but the words died as he watched her turn and walk from the room. Some part of him was sure she would come back, ask him what to do, or where something was. The front door closed, and then she was gone.
    In that vast land of pain that he lived in, time passed unnaturally. Every second was an eternity, yet before he knew it the sun had moved across the sky. Hooves pounded the ground in the distance. It was faint, but he knew the sound of his herd when he heard it. The mass of them passed by the house on the way to the pen. Moments later he heard a hammer pounding against the timbers as Valentine rebuilt the pen. Clint rested his head on the pillow and stared at the ceiling. Who was this woman? How had they been in such close proximity to one another for so long, and he had no idea she was capable of this?
    Moments later she came back into the house. He followed her movements based on the sound. She was washing up, changing clothes, then gathered a few things. When she reentered the room, she had the stick and the straps from before along with a few other pieces.
    She set these down on the floor beside the bed and then inspected the wound. “Hurt still?”
    “Yes.”
    She pulled the blade from the top of the clothing chest and prodded his leg. “Feel this?”
    “I… some. Not much, though.”
    She nodded approvingly. “Good. If you can still feel it, it lives. We shouldn’t have to lose the leg. We’ll set the bone, stitch the skin, and bandage it properly. Time will tell if it’s enough. Here.” She approached him with a small roll of hardened leather. “Bite down on this or you’ll break your teeth.”
    Clint looked at the roll and back up to her. “Who are you?”
    “Valentine. Your wife.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me you could ride?”
    She tilted her head at him as though he’d asked what the sun was that rose every morning. “You never asked. Bite.”
    It was a bluntly fair point. At a loss of what else to say in that moment, he opened his mouth and adjusted the roll to where it was comfortable.
    With a deep breath, he prepared himself for the long night ahead.
     

 
    For the first time since arriving, Valentine felt at home. Cattle were different beasts than the sheep she had grown up with, but the principles were the same. For weeks, Clint was bedridden. The damage to his back was fortunately limited to a bruising of the muscles, but his leg was too severely damaged for him to even think about moving around and ordering her about. Still, he didn’t seem too keen on doing just that anymore.
    She took care of him and the ranch. It was rough at first as she learned the schedule.