Chapter 6
Since her arrival at the mining camp a couple of months ago, Emily had learned so much. Most of her learning had come from Julie, but despite all of that preparation, Emily didn’t feel ready to tackle a bullet wound.
And yet, here she was, and here it was …
and she had no choice. Julie could most likely manage without her, but what would that say about Emily?
That she couldn’t manage? That she was weak and of little use to the inhabitants of the mining town?
Considering how she had arrived unannounced, she couldn’t afford to be a burden.
Especially now that Felix had also come to live here uninvited and unwanted.
So, she did her best.
The bullet was a large caliber, which Julie explained was a good thing.
“It didn’t bounce around,” she said. “It hit the bone and got stuck. That means there is a fracture to deal with too, and Ethan will be in a lot of pain, but he will live.”
“And all the blood?” Emily asked, holding out the dish for Julie to drop the compacted bullet into.
“The bullet sliced a minor blood vessel,” she said, dropping the bullet from her tweezers into the dish with a clang.
“A quarter of an inch to the side and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
He would surely have bled out on the way home.
” She sighed. “If only the sheriffs and marshals of the area would care enough to do something about the outlaws roaming freely around here. They don’t even bother to round them up.
Hand me that little bottle of alcohol. It’s ninety-five percent proof and guaranteed to kill any infection,” Julie said.
“I had some help distilling it from potatoes.”
Julie used a pipette to draw up a couple of drops and deposit them in the wound. Ethan sat bolt upright, his eyes wide with pain, fear, and panic. He stared at Emily, holding her in a grip so tight and powerful it felt as though he might snap her arm in two.
A string of colorful curses flew from Ethan’s tongue, and then he dropped back on the bed and went limp like a rag doll again.
Emily turned to Julie, only now daring to breathe. Her heart was a lump in her throat and for a drawn-out moment, she couldn’t utter a sound.
“I wasn’t expecting that reaction,” Julie admitted. “I’m sorry, Emily. Are you okay?”
She looked down at her arm. It had a red handprint on it where Ethan had grabbed her. It would most likely turn into a nasty bruise.
“I’m fine,” she said.
Julie nodded and set to work stitching the wound. She did a neat job, making her stitches small and even so that they would heal without leaving an ugly scar. Then, together, the women put a salve onto a gauze and bandaged his arm.
Ethan woke enough to drink a little bit of a diluted tincture for the pain and then went back to sleep.
“I’ll sit with him for a while,” Julie said as she finished washing her hands in a basin.
“We can take turns,” Emily said.
Julie nodded. “Yes, that would be good. Maybe Diana or Tilly could pitch in too?”
The girls had been coming to the clinic a lot lately to learn about herbs. It was a good idea. One of the refugees, a lady named Annabella, who had lost her husband in a bandit attack, had been coming too. Between them, they should be able to have someone with Ethan all the time.
“I’ll go and find them,” Emily said.
She washed her hands in the basin too and then left the medical tent. The sun was setting, and Emily was certain that everyone would be around the campfire by now.
She found Annabella on cooking duty in the kitchen tent. She was a small woman with thin shoulders and mousy brown hair that she covered with a scarf most of the time. She had large green eyes and long-fingered hands. She was cutting onions for the stew.
“Oh, poor Ethan,” Annabella said. “Of course, I would be happy to help. I’ll sit with him after dinner.”
“Thanks,” Emily said. “He should be fine; it’s just to make sure that he’s not alone if he wakes.”
Annabella nodded.
Diana and Tilly were sitting by the fire, giggling about something, when Emily found them. She told them about Julie’s request, and the girls hurried over to the medical tent right away.
With no other pressing business, Emily went to find Michael. He wasn’t in any of the usual places. She asked Kyle, but he also hadn’t seen him. She was about to give up when she spotted him and Felix coming out of Andrew’s tent.
Her stomach dropped to her toes. Something must have happened with Felix. She strode over to them, and her worst fears were confirmed when her uncle spotted her. He spread his arms wide and exclaimed, “Ah, there she is! Hello, Emily, my darling.”
“What did you do?” she demanded, her hands going to her hips.
“Nothing,” Felix lied.
She looked at Michael.
He looked exhausted, as she would expect after the day he’d had. And now he was dealing with her uncle. Her impossible, selfish uncle who never thought of how his actions could impact another person’s life.
“It’s okay,” Michael said, putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “We’ve dealt with it. Felix understands what he did wrong.” He cast a stern look at Felix.
Her uncle nodded and, smiling in that charming manner of his, held up his hands. “I thought I would keep the children out of trouble, but apparently I inadvertently did the opposite.” He chuckled.
Just then the dinner bell rang, and Felix seemed to prick up his ears. “Oh my! Is it that time already? Gee, I’d better go.” He hurried off.
Michael sighed. “I think I’m starting to understand why you were so keen to leave him behind.”
“What did he do?”
“Let’s talk about it over dinner,” Michael said. He touched her arm and she winced. “What’s wrong?” he asked with concern.
“I’m fine. Ethan just had a reaction to some of the medicine and grabbed me,” Emily said dismissively. “It’s fine. The poor man didn’t mean it.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yes, the bullet lodged against his bone, and Julie removed it and stitched him up,” Emily said. “He’s going to be fine. He just needs to sleep and rest.”
“Okay,” Michael said. “I’ll take over the smelting.” His expression grew dark.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He shook his head and put an arm around her shoulders. “Nothing, now that I’m back here with you.” He smiled.
Emily’s heart thumped happily in her chest. She was so relieved to see that he was all right. They walked to the campfire together with his arm around her, and she relished the closeness. Even so, she had the feeling that something was bothering him.
Perhaps they could talk about it over dinner.
As they reached the campfire, Emily realized that a quiet conversation with Michael would have to wait. Everyone wanted to know what had happened, how he and Ethan had fought off the outlaws, and how they had made it back to camp alive.
He told the story and then answered everyone’s questions, especially those from Ethan’s smelters.
“But I didn’t recognize any of the men shooting at us,” he concluded, “so it could have been the bandits or others unrelated to them.”
The three smelters exchanged looks.
“Well, I’m sure you have a lot to deal with,” Perez said. “We’ll leave you to it.” And they walked away, finally allowing Michael to eat his stew and rice.
“It sounds like you had your hands full,” Emily said when things died down. “Shouldn’t more people go into town together? I’m only asking because it seems you need more guns.”
Michael smiled. “You know, that might not be a bad idea,” he said.
“And then I came back and found your uncle teaching the boys how to play poker.” He sighed.
“I think if I hadn’t had such a difficult day, I would most likely not have reacted like I did.
I got so angry that I dragged him off to Andrew’s tent. ”
“And what did Andrew say?” Emily asked.
Michael shrugged, a spoon of stew on its way to his mouth. “Nothing much. He warned Felix not to allow the boys to gamble with actual coins. He said they can learn the game and play for chores or something like that.”
“Oh?” Emily asked. “I would have shut it down completely.”
“If you make it forbidden fruit, the boys will be twice as interested. And Andrew doesn’t think it will turn into anything,” Michael said.
“Most of the folks here play a hand or two from time to time. It’s nothing.
Felix was allowing them to play for money.
But it’s not gambling when it’s just for fun. ”
Emily disagreed. It was gambling, whether it was for fun or not, and it had caused havoc in her life. She tried to hide her thoughts, but Michael seemed to sense what she was thinking.
“We can keep an eye on Felix and see if it starts causing trouble. Andrew has so much to deal with at the moment, though, Emily, that I don’t think he was keen to be a sheriff as well.”
Emily nodded. “Is there someone here who can act as sheriff? I think the camp is getting to a size where that could matter.”
“You’re not wrong,” Michael said. “I know that Kyle and Kevin have both been corresponding with some women back east. Who knows, we could end up with them bringing their whole families out here.” He smiled as he spoke, and his tone was light as he teased her about Felix following her out to Texas.
With a playful glare, Emily shook her head. “Well, you never know. They might bring everyone and their dog. Oh, speaking of which, Tim has a pet raccoon.”
Michael raised his brows at her. “He does? Does Troy know?”
“I don’t know, I suppose he must because of Lizzy,” she said. “Julie knows. She treated the poor little thing. It got caught in one of the traps made for the bandits and hurt its hand.”
“Oh? Well, then, I’m glad Tim is looking after it. Maybe he can talk to Kyle about it. He is our resident animal carer. I thought he was going to tear into me when I rode the horses so hard to get Ethan back to camp fast. Sometimes I really think he likes animals better than people.”
Emily smiled. “So, apart from outlaws attacking you, how was San Antonio?”
Michael’s expression darkened.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He sighed. “There was something wrong with the ore today. We didn’t get paid as much as we should have because of the poor quality of what we pulled from the mine. I’ll have to go down there tomorrow morning and see what’s going on.”
“Well, then you need your beauty rest,” she said.
He shook his head. “No, what I need is time with my favorite lady. What do you say we grab a blanket, go to the edge of the security perimeter, and look at the stars for a while?”
Emily smiled. “Now that sounds wonderful.”
The ground was hard, the blanket itched, but Emily couldn’t have cared less. Lying on the ground, she stared up at the night sky with her heart full of happiness. She was so glad that she was there with Michael, just taking a moment out of their busy lives to enjoy God’s wonders.
“Can you believe that the stars are all just burning balls of gas?” Emily asked.
It had come up in a science journal the other day, with yet another scientist proving through some complicated math that she would never understand that stars weren’t the souls of loved ones or holes in the fabric of heaven.
“They’re suns, just like the one that shines in the sky every day.
The only difference is they are much, much farther away.
So far, in fact, one scientist has postulated that no human will ever reach another star. We won’t even reach our own.”
“Why would we ever want to do that? It would be pretty hot there,” Michael said.
“I would love to travel to a distant star,” Emily said dreamily. “Can you imagine what a huge adventure that would be? Flying through whatever is out there. It would be thrilling. A true test of human endurance and ingenuity.”
“With your luck, Em, Felix would come after you there too,” Michael said with a chuckle. “I think we need to give him a job to do. What is he good at?”
Emily had to wrack her brain to think of something. She knew that her uncle had held a job at one point in time. That was before he bought shares in a merchant company shipping precious cargo from Europe, the East, and the Americas.
“Gosh,” she said. “I think he used to do something with metals. Maybe he was a blacksmith? Or a jeweler? He knows a lot about appraising gold and the like. He got a good price for my mother’s earrings despite them being only slightly gold.”
“Of course,” Michael said and chuckled. “Felix certainly is a character.”
Abruptly Emily was filled with fear and anger.
She couldn’t go through this again. She pushed herself up on her elbow.
“Don’t say that,” she said earnestly. “Don’t pretend that he’s harmless.
He’s not. He’s a sneak and a liar. He charms people so that they think that I’m a monster of a niece who never gave him a chance.
They believe all the half-truths and lies that come out of his mouth, and I’m left looking the fool.
But I’m not the fool, because when he drops the act and makes off with their valuables, and they can’t seem to get anything back because he pawned it all, then they realize that I wasn’t lying or being cruel.
He is a nightmare on two legs. He’s selfish, petty, and he would sell anything to make enough money for a buy-in to a game.
He would sell his own child if he had any.
So, he’s not harmless, and you shouldn’t let him charm you. ”
Michael stared at her, his face half-lit by the lanterns that had been erected on poles around the camp to make navigating the little alleys between the tents and lean-tos easier. He looked shocked, as though she had slapped his face.
Emily instantly regretted her words. Was it too late? Had Michael fallen under her uncle’s spell too, like so many?
“Em,” Michael said gently. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. You’re right that your uncle is charming, and he comes across as a harmless old man. But if he bothers you so much, we can take him back to San Antonio and leave him there.”
Emily exhaled a sigh of relief. “No, we can’t do that,” she said.
“Why not?” Michael asked.
“Because he would find a way to lead the bandits right into the camp or something equally horrific and then pretend that he didn’t know what he was doing. No, despite how I feel about it, he’ll have to stay here under our noses.”
Michael nodded and, leaning forward, lightly kissed her cheek. “I’ll keep an eye on him,” he promised again, tracing a finger down her cheek. “I promise. He won’t hurt you again.” Then he cupped her cheek and rested his chin on top of her head, holding her close.
Emily’s whole being shivered with delight.