“Is she all right?”
“A little shaken, Doc. Going to have a bruise on her throat, but she told me to tell you, don’t bother to come check her.”
“She worries me.”
“If there’s any worrying to be done, it’s about Nichols, here. His brougham and driver are still waiting out front. We took Nichols out the back. The driver isn’t a concern yet, he’s waited till nigh on midday before, but if Nichols doesn’t eventually come out? There, uh, could be complications.”
Doc rubbed his face and tried to order his mind as they pulled up at the surgery.
It took the two of them to carry Nichols back to the table. Most of the time, the man muttered and tried to stumble along.
Doc lit his lamps and winced at the smell of vomit and stale drink. He slapped Nichols on the face, peering into the man’s eyes when he blinked. “Wake up!”
Nichols made a face, squinted against the light, mumbling, “Where am I?”
“You’re at Doc Hancock’s. What do you remember?”
Nichols’s gaze wandered in confusion. “You said…” He blinked. “Where am I?”
“Concussion,” Doc told Mick. He cleaned the cut on the side of Nichols’s head. “That and he’s so drunk he can’t stand. Hard to tell which is worse.”
“So he’s going to live?”
“I’d say so.”
“Think he’ll remember what happened?”
Doc shrugged. “Hard to say.”
“Where am I?” Nichols asked.
“So, what do we do?” Mick asked.
“I’d say take him back, have his driver load him in the brougham, and haul him back to wherever he’s supposed to be.”
Mick studied Doc warily. “If he remembers that Sarah whacked him in the head … Well, he ain’t the forgiving kind, Doc.”
“With that goose egg on his noggin, he’s going to know it wasn’t just an ordinary fling with Sarah.”
“Either way,” Mick told him, “Nichols is going to be trouble. He’s asked her to marry him more than once. She thinks she can handle him, but Doc, I been around. He’s a powerful man, and folks who stand in his way have a funny way of up and dying. Word is he’s got a killer working for him. Calls him the Meadowlark. No one’s ever seen him. But Nichols don’t need no help. If he is of a mind, he can break Angel’s Lair. Ruin it one of ten different ways.”
“I’ve heard.” Doc stared down at Nichols. He’d closed his eyes, snoring softly.
It would be so easy. He could soak a rag in chloroform and hold it over the man’s nose until he stopped breathing. No one would ever know. Tomorrow morning, Mick could have the body carried out to the brougham, claiming, “He just died in his sleep.”
If there were questions, Doc, as the house physician, could certify that the man’s heart had stopped. While he was known to serve the demimonde, he had enough influential clients that his reputation would be untarnished.
“Is this what I’ve come to?” he asked himself, feeling suddenly weak, as if his very soul had come unmanned.
“What’s that, Doc?”
“Nothing. Let’s get him back to Angel’s Lair.”
But one thing was certain, Sarah was dancing with a serpent, and if she wasn’t damn careful, it was going to get her killed.
109
April 30, 1868
The water was as hot as Butler could stand as he waded in naked and kept his father from sinking. The Smoking Waters were indeed hot springs, big ones that gushed up from the ground at the base of a series of low red hills and upthrust ridges. To him it looked as if the sloping mountains to the south had been broken, bent, and cracked. Where it emerged from the narrow canyon carved through the mountain, the Wind River ran clear, cool, and deep, passing within an arrowshot of the great springs.
“Got to get the sepsis out,” Butler told his father as he brushed at the dead and necrotic tissue with a brush made from a frayed willow stem.
Tears ran from his father’s face, suffering sounds came half choked from the man’s convulsing throat.
“Please, stop!” Paw whimpered, struggling weakly against Butler’s grip. “God … that hurts!”
Butler glanced at the shore. His men sat in a line just off to the side of where Puhagan, Cracked Bone Thrower, Red Rain, and Mountain Flicker waited. Dirty Face and several of his young men squatted to their right, concern in their eyes.
“I have to cleanse you, Father,” Butler told him. “I have to wash away the corruption. The slashes on your chest should have been sewed up, but they’ve healed too much now, so we’ll let them go. The same with the lacerations on your scalp.”
“Just let me die?” Paw wheezed, still trying to break free. Impossible given his right arm was shredded and useless, a chokecherry-stave splint immobilized his broken leg, and that he was drained by fever.
When Butler was finally finished, his father floated in the water, gasping and exhausted. Butler turned to Puhagan and nodded. The medicine man waded out, not even making a face as the hot water swirled around him.
Butler got a grip under Paw’s right armpit, and together he and Puhagan dragged the man up onto the stone-hard mineral of the shore. Mountain Flicker supported Paw’s broken leg.
Butler waded back into the water only long enough to splash himself all over to wash off the sweat that beaded and trickled down his hot skin. After the heat it was a delight to just stand, naked, letting the breeze blow over his red and dripping body.
Mountain Flicker stepped close and used her hands to slick the water from his hide, asking, “Will Silver Eagle be well now?”
“I have more to do.” Butler glanced uncomfortably at his father where he lay gasping and limp on the blanket. “The arm’s ruined.”
“Puhagan says the same,” she told him.
“It’s gonna be plumb ticklish,” Kershaw whispered from behind Butler’s ear. “Reckon I wouldn’t give yer paw a coon’s chance, Cap’n.”
“I have to try, Sergeant. He’s my father.”
“Butler?” Paw asked after Butler had pulled on his clothes and bent down. For the first time, his father really seemed
