Where Does My Heart Beat Now- Chapter 36

Chapter 36

To kill time before the main battle, the family split up in different directions to go check out what was happening throughout the town. Moira and Mae went to attend the Ladies’ Tea in one of the small shops by the train depot while Kate and Ava took the babies with them when they went to shop around the antique stores. Not even remotely interested in partaking in their girly plans, the men took to walking down the busy sidewalks as they discussed the upcoming battle, which was supposed to be a train raid in the Piney Woods along the banks of the Big Cypress. Gabriel only gave them minor details regarding the battle, for the rest of it would be explained when they were at the battle site. The talk of the battle ceased when Gabriel felt a strong craving for his favorite old fashioned candy, and he made a beeline for the General Store with Rob and Riley right beside him.

“What should we do now, Seamus?” Casey questioned after stopping by one of the buildings.

Seamus shrugged his shoulders and replied, “I don’t know. Let’s just keep walking,” he turned around and started walking in the direction they had come with Casey about two feet away from his side.

Further down the street, headed the boys’ direction, the lilac-colored woman and the scarlet-colored one strolled beside each other, talking about random things. The lilac woman wore a pale blue long-sleeved day dress covered in medium blue flowers. Her hair had been pulled into an up-do with the ends in sausage curls. She wore a blue teardrop-shaped hat with a matching veil at the back of it. She kept her jewelry simple: delicate pearl and blue crystal drop earrings. The other woman wore a white dress trimmed in black braiding with a matching long-sleeved buttoned up jacket. She had her hair pulled back in a tight braided bun with her hair parted down the middle. At her throat was a black and white cameo brooch, and in her ears were the matching earrings. Both women carried lace parasols in coordinating colors to keep the sun off of them

“I don’t understand why you have to be so hostile towards men, Ellen,” the lilac one shook her head, knowing what her friend’s answer would be.

“They’re all the same to me; good-for-nothing trash,” Ellen kept her eyes ahead of her so as not to make eye contact with her, “It’s best to stay away from them.”

Her friend chuckled, “You just haven’t found the right one, yet,” seeing some handsome men about to pass them, she hip checked Ellen, knocking her off balance, where she fell into one of the men.

“Lady going down!” Seamus caught Ellen in his arms and stood her back up.

She snatched her parasol from Casey before brushing off her skirt with her hand. With a sharp glance to her right, she said coldly, “Thanks… but I can take it from here.”

The two men watched her walk off beside her friend, and then continued on down the street, but not before Casey had to comment about the woman Seamus had just helped.

“Wasn’t that the w***e who dumped the chamber pot out on those Yankees?”

Seamus mentally cringed and stopped walking, which caused Casey to stop, as well. You shouldn’t have said that, Casey.

“What did you just call me?” Ellen slowly turned around to face Seamus and Casey, practically snorting smoke out of her nose.

Seeing the woman glaring daggers at Casey, Seamus leaned over and whispered, “Run… Now.”

Casey didn’t waste any time; he knew he was going to be turned into mince meat by an angry woman. He turned on the heels of his boots and took off at a dead run in the direction of the train depot. After seeing his cousin flee, Seamus turned back to the two women, and watched as Ellen snapped her parasol shut, reached underneath her skirt and dropped her crinoline to the sidewalk. There was no doubt in his mind what was getting ready to happen. What left him baffled was when she dropped her skirt and petticoat, too, leaving her in just her dress jacket, shirt and underpinnings.

Oh, hell… This isn’t going to end well, Seamus thought. She’s going to murder him.

“Time me,” Ellen said before taking off after Casey, running in long strides after his retreating form.

Her friend and Seamus stood staring after her, surprised by how fast she was gaining on him. She easily dodged people on the sidewalk and kept running after her target.

“Damn, she’s fast,” Seamus’s eyes widened when he realized that Casey was doomed.

The lilac-colored woman smirked, crossing her arms over her chest while still holding her parasol, “She was the track star in high school, if that tells you anything.”

Seamus cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Get the lead out of your britches, Casey!”

Having bought a bag loaded with an assortment of candy to satisfy his sweet tooth, Gabriel stepped out of the General Store with Rob and Riley right behind him. The three men were just about to go track down the others when they saw Casey run past them, hauling a*s down the sidewalk with an angry woman hot on his heels. It shocked them when they noticed that she was running in just her pantalettes and part of her dress.

“Wonder what he said to piss her off?” Gabriel asked to no one in particular while sucking on a piece of hard candy. And why she’s half dressed…

Rob cocked an eyebrow in response, “It’s Casey… It could be a number of things.”

They could hear Casey call back to them, “Gabriel, help me!”

Gabriel just shook his head and popped another piece of candy into his mouth, “Heh. You’re on your own, dude.”

The men watched as the woman caught up with Casey and threw her arms around his waist, dragging him to the ground with her. Casey let out a feminine shriek of surprise when he realized that he was done for. Once she had him in her grasp, she sat on top of him and slammed her knuckles into his shoulder blade. In an effort to get away from her, Casey tried to get his legs underneath him in order to run, but Ellen was not budging; she was the lioness who had finally caught her prey and was going to tear it apart.

 While watching the tussle on the ground, the others cringed when Ellen landed a punch in the middle of Casey’s stomach, making him gasp for air after having the wind knocked out of him. Gabriel and Riley were just about to go over to the two of them when Kate and Ava ran up with the babies clinging to them.

“What’s going on?” Kate asked, and as soon as she saw Casey being attacked by Ellen, she nearly went into hysterics and had to lean against the building to keep herself from falling over; the sight of Casey getting his face buried in the sidewalk was almost too much for her.

 All of them cringed again when Ellen elbowed Casey between the legs, sending him writhing away in pain.

“GET HER OFF ME!” Casey yelled before taking a blow to his kidneys.

“Do you think we should help him now?” Rob questioned, a little afraid for his nephew.

After having calmed down, Kate rolled her eyes and sighed, “As much as I’d love to keep watching this, we better go pull her off of him.”

The group looked at each other, waiting for one of them to head over and pull Ellen away from Casey, however, none of them felt like getting in between the two of them and facing Ellen’s wrath when she was already out to kill.

Rob spoke up after a few moments, “So… Who’s gonna go pull her off of him?”

“Don’t look at me!” Riley threw up his hands and backed away.

“But he’s your son.”

His brother raised his eyebrows in response, “Does it look like I want to put myself in the middle of those two? Angry women are deadly.”

Silence passed around the group as all of them thought about what Riley had mentioned until Rob nodded in agreement, “He’s got a point…”

“SHE’S…GONNA…FREAKIN’…KILL…ME!!!” Casey screamed in between Ellen slamming his face into a large flower pot. By then, he was starting to see stars.

Gabriel squeezed his eyes closed, debating on helping his cousin out, but like the others, he wasn’t too crazy about getting ripped to shreds by an angry woman, “…And there goes the last brain cell…”

Realizing that his cousin desperately needed help, Seamus ran over to the two of them and wrapped his arms around Ellen’s torso before lifting her off of Casey, “Come on, Baby Cakes… Let’s not kill my cousin, please.”

She put up a good fight, kicking her feet into his shins and shoving her elbows behind her, until he set her down several feet away from Casey. When she was free, she turned around and threw a punch at the person who had intervened, and when her fist made contact with Seamus’s toned chest, she thought she had broken her hand. Holy s**t! What is this guy made of? Bricks? After shaking off the pain, Ellen looked up into his face and felt her heart miss a beat at the sight of Seamus standing there with his long hair draped over his shoulders and pieces of his hair hanging down over his eyes underneath the brim of his hat. Hot damn… I didn’t think it was possible to make something that beautiful… Ellen shook her head to get her out of her daze. What the hell is wrong with me? I hate men!

Seeing that he was free, Casey pushed himself up to his feet and stumbled over to the rest of the group while keeping a close eye on Ellen standing in front of Seamus in case she decided to go for round two. He hated to admit it, but he was afraid of her and didn’t want to find out what else she could dish out.

Ellen turned toward Casey with her dark eyes trained on his and her mouth set in a straight line, “You’re lucky your family is here to protect you, because if they weren’t, I’d hit you so hard it’d make your great, great granddaddy feel it.”

Without saying another word to anyone, Ellen and her friend walked off toward their camp over by the old saloon, Ellen grumbling something about how men were pointless creatures. Unbeknownst to her, Seamus watched her disappear down the street before joining the others as they checked Casey over for any serious injuries. Despite his disheveled appearance, he looked to be all right. Noticing that his cousin’s hair was sticking up everywhere, Seamus licked his palms and then ran them over Casey’s head to smooth the hair down.

“Me head hurts,” Casey remarked after they had started back to camp so that they could get ready for the battle.

Gabriel laid his hand on his shoulder and said casually, “You had your head bashed into a flower pot of pansies by a pissed off woman. That’s probably why.”

“She hits like a man! For a second I thought she was going to rip me manhood off and throw it in the street.”

None of them said a word for the rest of the walk to their camp. They wanted to keep their focus on the upcoming battle. When they arrived at the camp, they would have just enough time to get loaded before it was time to ride over to the battle site. Kate was the first one to get started on reloading her guns, which was probably a good thing considering how many she had.

 

The scorching sun beat down on the 1^st Texas Cavalry and the other re-enactors as they waited for the battle to begin. All of the cavalry stayed hidden in the trees, waiting for any sign of the train they were supposed to overtake once it reached the straight section of the tracks. Up on the rise above the tracks, the spectators waited in anticipation for the first gunshots to ring out. In the distance, the cavalrymen could hear the squeal of the train’s wheels on the steel tracks, signifying that it was on its way. And then the ambush would begin. Their goal was to get the train to stop so that they could rid it of all of the Yankee soldiers on board.

In the meantime, Seamus sat atop Hermes, double-checking his ammunition in case he needed to get extra from someone when he heard a deep female voice off to his right. His head popped up to find Ellen and her friend strolling along the crest of the rise, carrying their parasols and little fabric purses. Ellen had put her skirt and crinoline back on from the look of it. Since he had been watching the women, he never even heard the train round the bend. When his eyes flicked back to Ellen, she was sitting on the grass beside her friend, fanning herself with her frilly fan.

“Seamus! Get your rear in gear… We’ve got a train to overtake!” Kate shouted after cantering by him on her way to intercept the steam engine.

Seamus and Hermes raced along the tracks to catch up to Kate and Buster, and when he reached them, they had stopped beside the train after it had come to a stop, and Kate was already on board, making her way down the cars with her .44 in the air. He stayed on Hermes in case he had to chase after someone if they decided to bail from the train. After making sure that the surrounding area was secure, he sat there with his Remington in his hand and kept his eyes on the train car Kate occupied. A group of Yankees surrounded Kate, but she stood her ground and had pulled out another .44.

“I’m requisitioning this train in the name of the Confederate States of America. Now, I want all of you damn Yankees off of here in the next five seconds or else you get to taste some lead,” Kate kept her jaw set and her hard gaze focused on the men surrounding her until they did as she said, and jumped off the train.

A major stepped up into Kate’s face and puffed up his chest, “And what if I don’t? What are you gonna do?”

“I SAID MOVE IT, ZIPPY!” She placed her booted foot on the major’s lower back and kicked him off when he passed by her.

Sitting on Bo down by the water’s edge, Gabriel smirked, “Well, that’s one way of getting the job done.”

After getting back to his feet, the major rallied his troop and pulled out his Colt, “Boys, let’s show them who they’re messing with. Give them a volley.”

The blue troops lined up beside each other and quickly loaded their rifles. Once they were loaded, their commanding officer gave the command to fire. All hell broke loose afterwards. A Confederate regiment that had been hidden in the tall brush on the rise popped up from their hiding place and unleashed a storm of rifle fire on the Union regiment just as the 1^st Texas Cavalry galloped up with their pistols trained on them. With all of the guns firing, it sounded as if they were in a middle of a hornet’s nest. At one point, the Union broke rank and scattered when the Confederate infantry ran at them with their rebel yell. Even some of the cavalry was chasing after them, firing at their retreating heels, but all of a sudden the fun turned into a matter of life or death when one of the infantry soldiers collapsed on the flat ground by the river.

“Man down! We have a man down!” A sergeant shouted from where he knelt beside the poor man.

Up on the hill, Ellen heard someone shouting below her, and she looked down to see a man waving his arms around to get someone’s attention. At first, she thought it was just for show, and then she saw the look of terror and concern on his face. Her senses kicked into overdrive in the seconds that followed, and she ran down the embankment with her friend right behind her while she pushed people out of their way as she went. She knew from experience that every second counted once someone had gone down.

“Move! Out of my way!” Ellen shoved past several re-enactors until she reached the fallen man, “I’m a paramedic!” She immediately watched the man’s chest to see if it rose and fell, and when she didn’t see any movement, she looked up and pointed to two soldiers standing nearby, one an older man with a scruffy beard and the other one a younger man with glasses, “You two! Call 911 and get an AED! Now!”

Her friend had knelt down by the man’s head and began to unbutton his wool jacket, thinking he had fallen from heat stroke, considering the temperature, but when she got to his shirt she struggled to rip the material. At the same time, Ellen was checking the man’s carotid artery for a pulse.

“Ellen, I can’t get his shirt off him!” Her friend said with an edge to her voice.

The scarlet-colored woman turned her torso around to face a group of cavalrymen on the embankment by the train tracks and yelled, “I need a knife! Someone get me a knife!”

While waiting to see if the Union men made a move to counterattack his group, Seamus heard a woman yelling, and turned to see Ellen kneeling beside a man on the ground with her friend by his head. The next thing that registered was her yelling for someone to get her a knife. For a minute he thought she was acting, but when he saw her frightened facial expression, he sprung into action. Kicking Hermes in the sides with his spurs, the two of them raced down the embankment toward Ellen and the re-enactor. While hanging onto the reins, Seamus reached into his boot and yanked out his bowie knife. He pulled Hermes to a stop beside the women and the man, and jumped from the saddle before running over to them.

“Watch out!” Seamus gently shoved Ellen out of the way, and then grabbed onto the man’s shirt and slipped the knife’s blade underneath, slicing upward with one quick motion. Afterwards, he dropped the knife to the ground and ripped the shirt the rest of the way open.

Ellen immediately started chest compressions once she had a clear view of the man’s chest while her friend and Seamus looked him over for possible clues as to why he collapsed, “1…2…3… 4…5…”

The lilac-colored woman ran her hand over the man’s arm and was becoming flustered, but just as she was ready to give up, she spotted a red welt on his side. On closer inspection she recognized it to be an insect bite or sting of some kind, “Ellen, it looks like he’s been stung by a bee!”

Her friend grabbed hold of Seamus and put him in the spot she had been in, “Do thirty compressions and then give him two breaths. You need to see his chest rise.  Keep repeating that!” She went over to look at the bite. He must have a serious allergy to bee stings.

“I can’t see his chest rise when I give him the breaths! Is something wrong?” Seamus remained calm despite the situation they faced.

She took over at the man’s head and noticed swelling of his face, and that’s when an idea hit her. After opening his mouth, she could see that his throat was starting to close up from the reaction, “He’s experiencing anaphylaxis! Faye, throw me the EpiPen in your purse!”

The other woman quickly pulled out the device and tossed it to Ellen, who set the amount to give and then slammed the needle into the man’s thigh, injecting him with epinephrine. She held it there, praying they weren’t too late. When she glanced up at Seamus, he was still giving chest compressions in hopes of getting the blood flowing, again. That was when a group of paramedics ran over to them and took over. They were able to get a breathing tube down the re-enactor’s throat, and placed him on a gurney while Ellen kept giving him chest compressions along with the paramedics on stand-by pumping air from a bag mask into his windpipe. After what seemed like the hundredth set of compressions, she placed two fingers on his carotid and smiled when she felt a faint thumping against her fingertips.

“He’s got a pulse! It’s a faint one, but it’s a pulse!”

Once they had taken the re-enactor away to put him in an ambulance, Ellen walked over to a tree near the train tracks and slid down the trunk until her bottom hit the grass. She stared blankly ahead of her as if she was physically and mentally drained. Before long, her emotions won over, and she dropped her head to her knees and began to pray silently. Every day she faced a new challenge, and she had once again, proved to be successful. When she opened her eyes, a shadow in front of her caught her attention, and her eyes drifted up to meet Seamus’s. At first, she didn’t know what to say, so she just sat there with her back against the tree trunk, and then Seamus broke the silence.

“Are you all right?” Seamus asked, concern filling his voice as he stood there.

Ellen nodded and let out a sigh, “I’m fine… This is a normal occurrence for me being that I’m a paramedic and also work in the ER,” she didn’t realize that she was starting to shake, partially from having her adrenaline kick in, “Thank you for helping me. I don’t know what I would have done without you jumping in so quickly with that knife.”

He squatted down in front of her, placing a hand on her upper arm, “You’re welcome. I only wish I could have done more.”

A small smile peeked out from the corners of her mouth at his gesture. She didn’t want to admit it, but she enjoyed him touching her, and found it to be gentle. Strangely enough, her heart gave a little flutter of happiness every time she looked at him. Why am I feeling attracted to him? This isn’t me. Before she could say anything in reply, one of the cavalry members trotted over to them to tell Seamus that they were heading out.

Seamus turned back to Ellen, “Just relax… and I hope to see you at the ball tonight,” he gave her a wink before mounting up on Hermes and riding off with the rest of the 1^st Texas.

You too, Ellen remained sitting against the tree, letting her mind process everything that had happened that day. It seemed as if she was taking her friend’s advice, even if she didn’t realize it. Maybe some men could be trusted…