“Those were good shots on Parmelee. I’ll see if I can’t get over and clean up the blood before you get home. Dave Cook’s deputies should have carted the body off to Walley’s by now.”
She stared into the past. “I gave him a hell of a lot more chance than he ever gave Bret, or me, or Aggie.”
After a long silence, Doc asked, “I know you spend time with Pat O’Reilly on occasion. Think you’ll ever marry again?”
“What I had with Bret was a miracle. God doesn’t grant two such in a lifetime. Pat’s a … what? Business partner? Friend? Sometime lover? I don’t know. But I’ll never marry again.” She glanced at him. “You?”
He shook his head. “We understand each other.”
The door to the street opened, the bell ringing.
Doc had no more than started for the surgery door when Butler called, “Philip? Assistance, please!”
Doc burst into the dimly lit front office to find Butler staggering under a young man’s weight. The newcomer wore a fringed buckskin jacket; one arm was hung around Butler’s shoulder. He was staggering, dragging a leg, and even in the dim light, the dark stain down his trousers had to be blood.
Doc got a hold, and together he and Butler dragged the bleeding man into the surgery. They heaved him up onto the table, where Doc stripped off the coat. He was checking the young man’s eyes as Butler held up the coat, saying, “Four bloody holes in the back. Turn him over.”
With Butler’s help, he rolled the body.
“Dear God,” Doc whispered as he cut away the bloody shirt and took in the entry wounds. Butler pulled the trousers down; the wound in the buttocks looked the worst. “It’s Shiloh all over.”
“God, Billy,” Sarah whispered. “What did you do?”
“Billy?” Doc wondered, bending down to inspect the young man’s bearded face. Yes, he could see the family resemblance. How had the boy he had once known grown into this face, lined with pain, and groggy as it was.
Faces. Memories of them—young like Billy’s—came flooding back from the past. The feel of blood caking on his fingers. Of impotence as desperate eyes looked up at his, praying for a miracle.
I couldn’t save them.
As he reached for his surgical kit, his vision began to silver with tears.
126
June 30, 1868
“C’est bon. Reckon she be one beautiful woman,” Kershaw noted.
“She is indeed,” Butler replied.
“Too bad,” Pettigrew muttered where he leaned against the surgery wall. Beside him morning light streamed in through the dirty-paned window.
“Woman like her”—Phil Vail bent over Sarah’s sleeping form—“why, she could have had any man.”
Pettigrew smirked. “Hell, given her profession, she’s probably had ’em all a time or two.”
Butler stiffened, pointing a hard finger at Pettigrew. “I thought you all heard my orders. You’re to keep a civil tongue. Or I’ll bust you right down to private.”
He must have spoken too loud. When he looked back, Sarah’s eyes were open, looking steely blue in the morning light.
“It’s unsettling when you do that,” she told him. “Doc says it’s one part of your brain dealing with another part. That you’ve given different bits of your mind an imaginary character. That it’s your way of arguing with yourself.”
“Doc is a very bright doctor. Maybe that’s exactly what I’m doing.” He gave her a welcoming grin.
“Then why don’t you stop, Butler?” She sat up, almost yipped with pain, and eased back down. “Son of a bitch!”
“You didn’t used to talk this way.”
“And you didn’t carry on conversations with the empty air.” She paused. “Sorry my language bothers you.”
“Why don’t you just stop, Sarah?”
She arched an eyebrow. “Throwing my own medicine back at me? Maybe I’m no longer a lady, big brother.” At his smile she pulled her long hair back and looked at the far bed. “How’s Billy?”
“Philip dosed him rather heavily with morphine. He removed the bullets and irrigated the wounds. Billy’s got a broken shoulder blade, a bruised kidney, two bullet-broken ribs, but the worst is the wound to his buttock. A rifle ball. It tore up the muscles pretty bad. How Billy could even stand, let alone walk, is beyond me.”
Sarah said, “It’s a miracle you found him last night.”
“That was Phil Vail’s work. He’s always been our best scout.”
Off to the side, Vail gave a two-fingered salute.
She stared at Butler as if uncertain if he were making fun. Then she shook her head—as though banishing an irritating fly—and asked, “Where’s Philip?”
“Out on the waiting bench, trying to sleep. I told him the men and I would stand watch.”
“The men and you,” she said absently.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“I’d worship you. And food if we have any.”
“I’ll bring you a cup and then walk over to the Broadwell Hotel. They let Doc charge for meals to go.”
It took Butler longer than he thought, it being almost a half hour before he was back with a basket. It was going to be a hot day, one of those brassy-skied, bake-you-dry ones.
He slipped in the door, careful to open it slowly so the bell didn’t wake Doc. The man looked uncomfortable with his head on the railing, his feet hanging off the far edge.
“Poor Doc,” Johnny Baker noted as he followed Butler in. “He tries so hard.”
Butler led the way into the surgery to find Sarah white-faced, her position on the couch changed. On the floor, the thunder mug was full.
“You should have waited for me,” he told her. “I could have helped.”
Her look was scathing. “Somehow, after working with Doc at the Angel’s Lair, helping him examine the girls, and watching him dig a bullet out of my leg, it wasn’t as embarrassing with him helping last night. He’s a doctor. You … and your men? That’s another matter.”
“But you let so many strange men who…” He froze, quivered. Set the basket down and tried to stop the twitching in his hands as he
