Jack turned back to Bram whose shirt was blood soaked. “You take a bullet?” he asked.
“No,” Bram said, “knife cut. Not deep. Thanks to Thor. This Injun come from nowhere, took Rudy and was on me before I could get my rifle to my shoulder. I fell back in the wagon, and Thor was on him like a mountain cat on a deer. Ain’t never heard such a racket, but that hound saved my scalp. Just help me get upright and then check on Rudy. I’m afeared the Injun done kilt him.”
Not Rudy. The ornery cuss was more than a brother. He helped Bram get his feet unhooked from the back of the wagon seat and leaned him up against the wagon’s sideboards. Another look at Thor found the dog panting with his tongue sticking out but propped up on his front legs, eyes alert. “Good dog,” he said, “brave dog.”
He went back through the wagon opening, only then becoming aware of the rapid and consistent gunfire cracking through the canyon. He looked toward the north wall and saw that the Apaches were on the run. They were taking fire from above, where Tige and Roper were pouring lead. Caught in a crossfire, the half dozen ambushers who survived were racing west along the mountain’s edge toward the gap’s exit, where Jack assumed a warrior or two waited with horses. They would likely circle back tonight to find their dead and wounded.
Jack eased down off the wagon seat to the ground where Rudy was crumpled up facedown. He rolled his friend over, checking first to see if he was breathing. He was. The only wound he could find was a deep gash within a lump on the left side of Rudy’s head, where the blood had clotted some but started to flow again after Jack moved him. He caught sight of a stone-headed war club on the ground nearby. That must have been the weapon, and somehow the warrior had dropped it before he pulled his knife or perhaps Rudy grabbed it while he was falling from the wagon seat.
“Rudy, it’s Jack,” he said. “Wake up.” He twisted Rudy’s ear, and his eyes popped open.
“What the hell you doing, Jack, messing with my ear? Oh, shit. I got a headache that’s tearing my head off.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jack did not like the idea but resigned himself to spending the night in the middle of Castle Gap with the thought they would make Horsehead Crossing by noon and be across the Pecos on the west bank early afternoon. Three wounded Apaches, including the warrior who had clubbed Rudy and taken on Thor in the chuckwagon, sat glowering in a cluster on the slope. Five Apache corpses were stretched out nearby. Jack suspected all would disappear during the night. They would post guards in the event the survivors had notions beyond retrieval of their dead and wounded, which he considered unlikely.
Jack had been surprised when Sierra assumed command of medical treatment, telling Jordy that she needed his help. She even carried a box with heavy suture and big needles in her possible bag, which she had brought with her for mending horse injuries. She was examining Rudy, Bram, and Thor near the chuckwagon, advising Jack she would look at the Apache wounded when they were finished with their own. Nobody else among their party had incurred a scratch.
Bram’s wound had been a knife slash across his ribs that yielded a river of blood but touched no vital organs.
Jack watched as Sierra efficiently stitched the wound after pouring some whiskey from one of Rudy’s hidden bottles over the open cut. She instructed Jordy to rip a clean sheet she had found in the wagon into strips and to wrap Bram's waist.
She moved to Thor, lying on the ground next to Rudy.
“The dog comes before me?” Rudy complained. Jack thought Rudy might be half joshing Sierra.
“Thor whipped his opponent,” Sierra replied. “Besides, he shouldn’t take as long.”
Jack knelt beside the dog and stroked his head. “She’ll fix you up as good as new, old boy. Or get you back in business, anyhow. I think we’re both beyond made new.”
Sierra found a cut on the dog’s shoulder and shaved around the area with the razor she had commandeered from Jordy and quickly took four stitches. She added two more to a slice on one ear. The dog did not even whimper while Jack held him still for the surgeon.
“The cuts on his muzzle and below the eye will heal on their own. He’ll have scars to go with all the others on his face.” Sierra said.
“A story for each one,” Jack said.
“Now, Uncle Rudy, your turn,” she said.
“Uncle Rudy?” He was silent for a moment as if pondering. “I like that, young lady. Yeah, Uncle Rudy will do just fine. Makes me feel like family.”
“You are family,” she said.
Rudy beamed until she started probing his wound. Then he moaned.
She got out her suture and needle. “I haven’t even started yet, Uncle Rudy.”
Rudy’s eyes widened when he saw the needle. “My God, girl. That’s big as a damned Bowie knife. You ain’t fixing to sew up my scalp with that?”
“It’s the only sized needle I’ve got. It is for horses.”
“We’ll let it be. Ain’t like the top of my head is a thing of beauty. The scar will fit in with the decorations that Comanche put there.”
Sierra said, “It won’t take more than four stitches. I promise. It will take forever to heal if I don’t stitch it. Do you want screwworms to get in there? They might eat right into your brain.”
“No chance,” Jack said. “That’s all rock fill in his head.”
“Screwworms?” Rudy asked. “I thought that was a cow and horse thing.”
“Flies lay the worm eggs. They’ll go for anything,” Sierra said.
“I wear my hat most all the time.”
“I am
