The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(89)

"Had to cut a little to get at the infection in your cheek." Her breath smelled distinctly of Jack Daniel's — not surprising, knowing Farn, but not a smell you wanted on someone who was giving you urgent medical attention.

Farn must've been past eighty, tough as beef jerky, a widow and a large-animal vet who'd leased most of her neighboring wheat fields to the Navarre family for as many years as I could remember. Now in her retirement, Farn no longer made house calls unless it was for a sick cow she really cared about. I supposed I should feel honored.

We were on the back gallery of the ranch. The early morning air was bleeding through the screens. Outside, ground fog was turning the yellow huisache trees into hazy sketches. Charolais cows drifted across the pasture. The old white water tank rose in the distance. The hay shed. Past that, a hundred acres of stunted Texas wheat just turning from green to gold. Pastoral.

Farn finished stitching me up, then checked the dilation of my eyes and the IV that she had attached to my arm. She yelled into the next room, "Arguello!" Ralph came in, holding a snifter with my father's name, JACK, printed on the side. Ralph's hair was freshly washed and unbraided. It fell in a loose fan of gray and black. With his huge white shirt untucked he looked like one of the apostles, one of the very bad ones.

"Looking better, vato."

"Better than what?" I managed.

Farn closed up her kit, scowled down at me. "Yer lucky as hell. Be all right — hell of a headache for a few days, soreness all over. The drugs they gave you are going to leave you with the shakes, some nausea. He**in mixed with some kind of prescription sedative, near as I can figure. You might black out once in a while."

"Yay."

"You're going to feel like you been run over on a West Texas highway and left to dry in the sun, darlin', but trust me — you're damn lucky."

"I want some water," I said.

Farn nodded. "Figures. I'll see y'all later."

She was replaced by Erainya, who stared down at me critically. She held a glass identical to Ralph's — one of the Jack snifters.

Ralph took the chair Janice Farn had been sitting in. He propped some more pillows behind my back.

Erainya drained her whiskey, then grimaced. "So, what — you think it's easy to get a baby-sitter for two days? You think Kelly wanted to give up a weekend to mind Jem and our guests while we bailed you out of trouble?"

"Our guests. Jesus Christ."

"Still at my house," Erainya assured me. "Little Michael..." She shook her head. "Poor paidi's never even played Donkey Kong before."

"Can you imagine."

Erainya shook her head again. "Ines isn't too happy, either. She wanted to bolt out the door when she heard what had happened to you."

"Why didn't she?"

Erainya glared at me, giving me a taste of the scolding she had no doubt inflicted on poor unhappy Ines.

"Thank you," I said.

Erainya slapped the air. "She'll stay put for a few more days anyway."

"Long as you keep the television news turned off," Ralph added.

"The news?"

"Never mind, vato. Time for that later." Ralph drained the Jack glass.

I looked into the main house, through the mud-and-log doorway that had been the original front entrance in the 1870s. Beyond the archway, the living room was long and low, dimly lit. A fire was going in the old limestone hearth. Ozzie Gerson and Harold Diliberto, the ranch caretaker, stood looking down into the flames. Ozzie wore a side arm and Harold had a deer rifle nestled in his arm. "Ozzie took early retirement as of today," Erainya informed me. "He says he'll be here as long as you need him. Diliberto says he won't put the rifle down until  you tell him to. The old geezer told me anybody tries to get to you out here, he and Ozzie are going to use the tiger traps, whatever that means. I got my doubts about him."

My head ached. I rubbed my temples, discovered that was a major mistake. I  tried to drink a little water from a paper cup Ralph handed me.

"I got to be going, vato," he said. "More than a couple of hours out here in redneck country, I start getting nervous."

"We wouldn't want that."

He grinned. "Give me a call when you want the Barracuda back, vato. I'll have it waiting for you."

"Thanks."

"There a back way to San Antonio?"

"Old Highway 90. Why?"

"I had to phone DeLeon, tell her what was up."

"Ines—"

"No, man. Not about that. That's your call. But Ana's coming out right now. She wants to kick my manly ass for the scene we pulled on Commerce. Some people are never grateful."

When Ralph was gone, it was just me and Erainya, watching the sun come up over the fields, the dew start to glisten on the leaves in the trees, the cows lining up for their daily trek down to the creek. Single file, heifer style.

Erainya stood over me, examining my face skeptically. "I thought we'd lost you, honey. Couple of times in the car, I put my hand on your chest, just to make sure you were still breathing."

I closed my eyes. My cheek had started to tremble. The trembling didn't stop.

"We didn't say anything to your mother," Erainya told me.