{Chapter 12}
A week passed and Toni’s impatience grew by the day. She was beginning to regret her decision to let J.T. go, but she knew she couldn’t undo what she had done.
She had the men lined up in front of the larger bunkhouse, walking by placing a six-shooter in each of their hands.
“What’re these for?” Tiny asked.
“They’re to defend yourself with, but if I find one of these bullets in my chicken, there will be consequences. These are for rustlers only,” Toni said.
The other men snickered and Tiny scowled at them.
She got down to the last man and held out a gun to Erik.
“I don’t need one, Boss,” he said.
She looked at him. “Why not?”
“I’ve got my knives. I’m better with them, anyway,” Erik said.
“I’d feel better if you had a gun on you, though,” Toni said, trying to reason with him. “They can shoot farther than a knife.”
“Not if I can’t hit my target,” Erik said.
Toni sighed and thought a moment. She needed her men to be armed. All of them. Sure, she had seen what Erik could do with a knife, but she didn’t feel easy about him not having a six-gun.
“I’ll make a deal with you. We’ll pick out a target, and if you can hit if with your knife, I’ll let you hold off on the gun. If you miss, you’ll pack one. Deal?”
Erik thought a moment before a grin stretched over his face. “Sure.”
Toni picked out a fencepost about fifty paces away and stood beside Erik.
“Reckon you can hit that?” she asked with a smug grin.
Erik shrugged. “Guess there’s only one way to find out.”
He twisted his oak-handled, steel bladed pig-sticker in his hand and eyed the distance. With a brief moment to aim, he drew back and threw the knife through the air at an arc. The blade came down and stabbed into the top of the fencepost.
Toni was impressed, but she didn’t dare show it.
“Hmm” was all she said.
Erik grinned at her, but not out of pride or conceit, but more out of the fact that he knew she was impressed.
Anxious to try to prove him wrong, she held out her hand. “Let me try.”
Erik’s grin widened as he gave her a massive knife.
“Gotta smaller one?” she asked.
He gave her a much smaller one that more suited her hand size.
She aimed, drawing the blade back, and threw the knife with as much force as she could muster. She failed to hear or see the blade stab into the post, so she looked around for it. It wasn’t in the air, so she was beginning to think that she had completely missed when a strained, whimpering sound came from Erik.
She looked at his tensed up face, his mouth agape in a silent scream, his eyes directed down. She followed his gave to his feet, where a pearl-handled knife stuck out of his closest boot.
She stared at it, shocked at what she saw.
“I didn’t do that did I?” She asked, cringing when the toe of his boot began to stain with blood.
Erik looked like he was about to burst, and the pain was evident in his eyes. He directed his eyes toward her.
“You… You stabbed my foot,” he squeaked.
She went into a panic -running here and there- trying to find someone to help him inside the bunkhouse.
Wade came running at the sound of her squealing.
“What’s wrong?” he hollered.
Toni roughly explained what had happened, and Wade helped Erik into the larger bunkhouse and settled his on the edge of his bed. Erik’s face contorted when he looked down at the knife still snug in his boot.
“Get it out” he said through clenched teeth.
“Are you sure? Wade, send Ben for the doc. He can take Storm,” Toni said.
“Yes, I’m sure! Get it out, already!” Erik said.
“Okay, okay, it’s going to be okay” Toni said more to herself than to Erik.
Wade ran out and Toni braced herself for Erik’s yell as she took hold of the knife’s handle.
She grasped at air.
Realizing that she had closed her eyes, she opened them to see Erik with this jaw tight with pain and a blood-tipped knife in his hand.
“You took too long,” he groaned.
She let out a relieved sigh. “We need to get the boot off.”
“What’s going on?” Katie’s voice said as the door squeaked open. “Everybody’s running here and there all fired up---” She stopped where she saw Erik.
“Katie, be calm,” Toni, said when a white pallor came over Katie’s face. “It’s just an accident.”
“He’s… b-bleeding” she said, her eyes wide open.
Wade came in at that moment.
“Wade, get her outta here,” Toni said.
Wade put his arm around Katie’s shoulders and led her outside.
“Okay, Erik. You ready?” Toni took hold of his boot.
“Ow! Now so hard” Erik commanded.
Toni, as gently as possible, tugged the boot free. A tiny yelp escaped Erik, but he took it like a man. The toe of his sock was drenched in blood, and a few drops splattered the floor.
She took the knife he had been gripping in his hand and moved to cut the sock off.
“No!” he hollered, yanking the knife from her. “Stay away from me with knives, okay?”
Toni sighed, understanding why he would be so nervous, and handed him the knife. “Cut it off yourself, then.”
Erik ran the knife along length of the sock and started to peel it away. The fabric stuck to his little toe like flypaper, signaling that as the place of the wound. Toni decided to leave he task of peeling it off to the doctor, and stood back.
“We need to stop the bleeding, don’t we?” she asked.
Erik shrugged painfully.
“I have some gauze somewhere in here, I think” Toni looked around and located a small box on a shelf on the far wall. Every ranch needed a box with such things as gauze and medicines in it. She walked over to it and pried the lid off, withdrawing a roll of the spongy white fabric.
After wrapping up Erik’s foot and applying pressure to the right side of his foot until the bleeding stopped, Toni pulled up a chair and sat down beside him.
“I’m so sorry, Erik. I did this to you and I know it,” she said with remorse.
She hated herself for doing this to the man who had kissed her forehead only a week before. She had never been kissed before that day. Never in her whole life.
“It was a simple accident. How were we to know that you possess such appalling skills when it comes to knife-throwing” Erik said, completely serious.
Toni couldn’t help but smile. It was true; she was terrible at knife throwing.
“I don’t guess I’ll make you wear a six-gun,” she said.
Erik smiled. “I will if you want me to, but only on necessary occasions.”
Toni smiled. “Deal.”
**********
The doctor arrived a couple of hours later, and he properly bandaged Erik’s toe-or what was left of it- and gave him something for the pain, then left. Erik had found that Toni not only stabbed him, but he was shy half of a toe because of it. He wouldn’t be able to even think of wearing a boot for a while on his right foot. The grotesque image of his cut-up toe still fresh in his mind, Erik closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall behind him.
Lord, I don’t remember half of what I said to Toni earlier. I hope I controlled my tongue.
“No worries” Toni said on the other side of the room.
Erik realized that he had just spoken the words aloud.
“You were the perfect gentleman” Toni came and stood beside him.
Erik sighed out of relief. Toni laid two knives in his lap. “I got the one out of the post and cleaned the other for you. Had to do something while the doctor was tending you.”
“Thanks” Erik looked over the shiny blade of his pearl-handled knife. “Pop gave this to me before he left. Said that I was the man of the house and that I had to watch out for my mother and sister. Guess he didn’t know Emily that well then.”
“I thought you said your father walked out?” Toni asked.
“He did.”
“Then why do you have all of these fond memories of him?” Toni sat down on the edge of the bed.
Erik sighed. “It’s a strange situation. Pop was a real loyal man. He was never the kind to just run off and leave us. He said he was going to come back, but he never did. It… it’s just not like Pop to be that way. At first I thought Momma wasn’t telling me something, but then I guess I stopped trying to figure it out. I’ve accepted that he ran off to be a miner. He’s probably dead by now, anyway,” Erik explained.
Toni looked him in the eye, her expression serious. “How can you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Just accept what a scoundrel your father was and move on. Hasn’t it affected you?”
“Sure it has” Erik said. “I just realized that what’s done is done, and the rest is in God’s hands. I’ve just gotta live up to my end of the bargain and take care of Momma and Emily.”
“But what if God doesn’t care about them? What if He completely forgot about ya’ll?” Toni asked.
Erik looked at her. Surely, she didn’t believe that God was that cruel. “He doesn’t forget about any of his children, Toni. The Bible says that He’ll never leave us or forsake us.”
“All the more proof that God is a liar” Toni spat out, her words laced with hate.
Erik’s stomach twisted at the hateful words. Toni’s heart was filled with so much hatred toward her parents and her mysterious uncle that she couldn’t even think straight. No good ever came out of dwelling on hatred.
He said as much to Toni, as she gave him a confused look. “Are you really trying to tell me that you never hated your father for leaving you like that?”
“I struggled with it for a while, but there’s always a time when you just need to lay aside what you want and accept the things you can’t change. It took a while, but I think I finally understood that and let my father and whatever he did go” Erik said.
Toni stood and turned her back to him. “Maybe it was easy for you, but not everyone can be perfect.”
“Perfect? You of all people should know how imperfect I am. I have a terrible temper and I’m extremely jealous. Especially when it comes to my sister. You wanna know how long it took me to let Judd start courting Emily? Three years, and that’s with his asking every other week, too” Erik said.
“There’s nothing wrong with being protective. A girl needs to be protected. No one protected me and look what happened?” Toni said, her back still to him.
“What happened?” Erik asked as gently as possible, anxious to get a glimpse of the real Toni Curtis. What had made her so hardened.
Just like that, her protective barrier went back up, and she spun toward the door. “Nothing.”
The door slammed shut, and he waited until her footsteps faded away.
Nice one, Erik.
**********
Toni was restless for the next few days, refusing to stand guard with the herd or even stray to far from the main ranch out of fear that something would happen to Erik. Like anything would happen. Pillows on three sides barricaded him, and his foot was propped up nearly directly above his head. He hadn’t hardly lifted a finger since the accident happened, what with everyone making sure he had everything he needed, sometimes even things he didn’t need.
Twisting the white envelope in her hands, Toni strode up to the main bunkhouse and knocked on the door. It wasn’t often that any of her boys got a letter from family, and Erik had just received one from his sister.
“Come in” a gruff voice said in monotone.
“It’s just me, McBride. You gotta letter” Toni said as she opened the door.
Erik ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Who’s it from?”
“Emily.”
“I figured as much. I’m as good as a dead man now,” he said, holding his hand out.
Toni gave him the letter and watched him read it.
“Well, there goes the neighborhood” he said after reading the brief missive.
“What’s wrong?” Toni asked.
“She didn’t even chew me out for getting fired. She just told me the latest news and then decided to tell me at the end ‘P.S., Judd asked me to marry him’” Erik huffed at his sister’s briefness.
“Well, at least she told you” Toni said.
“She didn’t even say what she said! Now I’ve got to count out the money I’ve been saving for years and send it to her. Then I’ve got to make arrangements to go over there for the wedding. Let’s not even mention the ridiculous outfit my mother’ll try to put me in…” Erik rambled on about all the outrageous things his Georgian family does for weddings, and Toni just listened.
The poor man was probably bored out of his mind from staring at the same four walls and looking out of the same, cloudy window for a week. Not to mention he was probably burning up from all of the stuffy pillows around him.
“-I’m probably gonna have to stand watch day and night on the porch because Momma will be sure that Judd will come around…”
“McBride” Toni interrupted. “Shut up and think about this a second? You don’t even know what she said, when the wedding is, and -in any case- I wouldn’t let you go alone with your bum foot anyway.”
“It’s not like my sister to be so vague. She usually tells me everything that happened since she last wrote, what neighbor had a barn cat die, sometimes every little thing she had done that day before writing me. Something’s up, I know it” Erik said, crossing his arms.
She understood his being so irritable, but there was nothing she could do about it. It wasn’t like she had any…
Wait a second.
“Hold up, I’ve gotta thought.”
Toni rummaged through her closet, finally coming across two wooden crutches.
“I knew I had these somewhere from when Wade busted his leg up” she muttered to herself.
“For the love of Pete, Toni! What are you doing in there?” Katie’s voice carried to her.
“Nothing, Katie!” Toni hollered as she ran out of the door.
She reached the bunkhouse and burst inside without knocking.
“I found them” she held the crutches out to Erik.
“Crutches? That was your big idea?” Erik arched an eyebrow.
“Well, at least this way you can get up and walk around. I know it must get stuffy in here,” Toni said.
She waited until suddenly Erik smiled with a strange glint in his eye.
He had an idea.