Heath
We almost bumped into each other. She was going to knock on our front door as I was opening it to step outside. For a moment neither of us spoke. She was so beautiful it took my breath away. I felt my skin burn as I hopelessly blushed. I smiled and managed to find my voice in order to ask who she was and who was she looking for. As she shyly spoke, I watched her cheeks turn red, making her look even that much prettier.
"My name is Jean, Jeannie Price, and I'm looking for Nick Barkley".
My jaw dropped. I heard Nick's words again, the words he had spoken that cursed night.
"Nights like this always remind me of a girl I once met, in a place called Willow Springs. Her name was Jean, Jeannie Price. She had hair the color of that moon".
She was no longer the young girl my brother had known. She was a young woman now. But her hair was still the color of the moon.
Boy howdy, wasn't that ironic? Jeannie Price, herself, had come all the way from Willow Springs looking for Nick. Too bad he wasn't here as he had left the ranch almost two months ago, headed to Willow Springs, looking for her.
She was here and he was gone.
My brother Nick and I had known each other for almost one year. Our relationship hadn't started well. Nick had hardly accepted me as a brother and had given me quite a hard time. But I had made a point of gaining his trust and I had worked hard for that, keeping my pride at bay, swallowing delusions and humiliations, and I had succeeded. Slowly, things had started to change and by the time I had been the target of Evan Miles' rifle, I knew they had changed altogether.
I could almost physically feel our connection that night. It was becoming stronger day by day. Living together, working together, two young men driven by the same principles and tied by the same blood, we were becoming what we were meant to be, real brothers and beyond, for that matter. I had never had siblings before, but I couldn't imagine a tighter bond. I didn't know about him, but I felt there was something more, something special between us.
He was leaning on a tree, I was lying on the ground with my shoulders on my bedroll, a mug of coffee in my hands, savoring the warm brew, smelling the scent of honeysuckle in the air, my brother there beside me and just the starry sky above us. Nick's soft voice telling about a girl he had known a long time before, sweet memories of an early love, of a young brother I hadn't had the chance to know. I could see them in my mind and I chuckled at the picture of a young girl landing at my brother's feet, falling from a tree she had climbed to watch the dance that was going on inside a church.
Boy howdy, it felt so damn good. But then suddenly something happened, changing our lives forever.
Something had spooked the horses, and Nick was taking the stallion away from the mares when the wolf attacked him.
"Heath!", he cried out.
Before I shot the wolf dead, it had the time to sink its poisoned fangs into my brother's arm. It was a rabid wolf. That, had been the beginning of the end of the life we were just then getting acquainted to.
Nick wanted my word not to tell anything of what had happened to the family.
He demanded of me a vow of silence.
Since then, nothing was the same anymore. We came back home and it was hard, but my ordeal began when Nick left the ranch.
I deeply loved those who had become my family. With my silence, I was making them suffer, but it was just as much painful for me. It was almost too much to bear. I had to deal with their increasingly pressing questions and at the same time every single day for two months I had to deal with my own misery suffering alone over Nick's possible death.
The very day Nick had ridden away, I began the countdown of the sixty days we had left to know whether he would live or die. I marked the numbers of each day in my notebook, Nick's dying days. I had promised I wouldn't go looking for him and was resigned to struggle on my own. I could do nothing but hope, just like the doctor had said.
The doctor we had seen soon after that night, had said the main symptoms would be headache and fits of rage. He had said that rabies had a sixty day incubation period. If at the end of those sixty days Nick was still alive, chances were he would stay that way. He gave us some pain medicine and wished us good luck.
Nick stayed at the ranch for a few more days. The symptoms appeared almost immediately, throwing our family into despair.
Then, Nick left in search of his lost love, the very girl who was standing in front of me now.