Someone tried the doorknob, found it locked. A frantic hammering was accompanied by a woman’s shout. “Hello! Help me!”
Doc set the candy aside, stood, and walked to the door.
“Dear God!” the panicked voice cried. “Somebody, be here!”
Doc slid the bolt and pulled the door open.
The frantic woman was soaked to the bone, her hair hanging in straggles that leaked water. She wore a sodden wool coat, and behind her a man, bareheaded, shivering, his face a mask of torture, held a child in his arms, his posture that of a supplicant.
“You’re a doctor?” The woman almost pleaded.
“Philip Hancock. Yes, ma’am. What’s wrong?”
“She’s shot! It was an accident. Her brother … with the shotgun. He was shooting a rabbit. It ran in front of Bessie!”
Doc waved them in, hurrying to the desk, fumbling for the matches. Cranking the chimney up, he lit the lamp and adjusted the wick.
“Bring her.” He led the way to the surgery, painfully aware that it was in disarray, hardly the pin-neat facility he’d kept when Bridget …
No, don’t go there.
He swept the clutter off the table and said, “Place her there.” Then he went about lighting the other lamps.
Turning to the girl, he figured her for about eight or nine. Her dress was homespun and worn, mud and blood splotched her coat. “Help me here.”
With the mother’s help he got the dripping coat off the girl, and unbuttoned her bodice. Slipping her arms out of the sleeves, he got a good look at her chest; rain-wet bloody punctures in the girl’s left side were leaking red.
“How long ago?”
“Maybe an hour or two. We unhitched the horses, rode straight here. A man on the street pointed your way.”
The little girl’s eyes were open, half lidded. She whispered, words inaudible, as if her voice were gone.
“Help her!” the mother pleaded.
Doc turned to his surgical kit, thankful once again that Butler and his men had stolen the best.
“This may take a while. Nor should you watch. Please. Go back to the office. There’s coffee and water. Wood and kindling next to the stove. If you need food, I’d suggest sending one of you down to the Planter’s House. They can fix a meal in a tin to go.”
They stared at him as he turned back to the little girl, his probe in one hand. Ether bottle in the other. “Go on! I’m going to do the very best for Bessie that I possibly can. This isn’t my first gunshot.”
After they’d closed the door, he looked down into the little girl’s half-vacant eyes. “Sweetheart, we’re going to do everything we can.”
And he did.
Three hours later, his feet and back aching, Doc walked out into the office. The way the man and woman were seated on the bench, it was as if they were propping each other up. Expressions of agony were replaced with desperate expectation.
Doc reached out. The man extended his hand, and Doc dropped four buckshot pellets onto his palm. “If she makes it, you’ll want to give her those as a remembrance.”
“If she makes it?” The mother stared up with bloodshot and swollen eyes. She’d have been a pretty woman had her thin face not been hardened by sun, worry, and deprivation.
Doc took a seat opposite them. “Bessie’s sleeping. The bleeding is stopped. One lung was collapsed. I’ve got it reinflated and her chest drained and sealed. She’s breathing normally again, and the strain on her heart has been relieved. From here on out, it’s up to Bessie, and if she can tolerate the infection.”
The man nodded, the woman staring vacantly, as if unsure what to believe.
“I’m going to keep her here,” Doc told them. “I’ve slept in the chair before. “Do you have a place to stay?”
“My sister’s husband is a baker here in town. We can stay there,” the man said. “Theodor, Bessie’s brother, will see to the farm.”
“Go get some rest,” Doc told them. “Come back in the morning.”
He saw them to the door. Watched them disappear into the rain-black night.
Sighing, he realized he was starved for the first time in days. Again, he longed for Bridget, for the hot meal he knew she would have had waiting for him. He could see the concern in her green eyes as she watched him eat, the smile she’d give him, filled with pride for the work he’d done on little Bessie.
And he had done good work on the little girl. If the infection didn’t take her, she’d live. He’d done it. Given her a chance where none had existed.
Glancing at the desk, he stopped, cold fingers sending a shudder through him. The candy lay there beside his half-empty coffee cup.
What if Bessie’s father or mother had picked it up? Popped it into their mouths?
“Philip, you are an imbecile!”
Picking up the candy with careful fingers, he unlocked the bottom drawer, opened the cash box, and tossed it back into the tin box’s interior.
113
June 1, 1868
Billy fingered the stubby copper cartridge as he relaxed against his saddle. He’d laid it over a log, and with the stirrup shoved back, used the fender as a backrest. Firelight flickered, and sections of branches cracked and popped as they burned. Overhead the trees gleamed yellow in the pale light of a quarter moon. The stars seemed unnaturally bright as they cast patterns beyond the treetops.
“I don’t think these are such a good idea,” Billy said as he held the .44 cartridge between his fingers and studied the rimfire.
“Why’s that?” Parmelee asked from across the fire. The man was in his underwear, hemming the ragged cuffs of his pants. He glanced up from his needlework. The man’s sun-ruddy face had surrendered to a reddish-blond beard that made him look older, almost sagacious.
“Well, imagine that all we had were these Henry rifles. We got a total of fifty-six cartridges for the two of them. That’s all them galoots was carrying. So we get in the middle of the Big Horn Basin, like we was, and run smack inta a big party of Sioux. We
