Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Doc woke up with a start, instantly alert, his pulse racing. On the blurred edge of a dream, a sound or a movement—some threat of danger—jarred his defenses. He was unaware that he’d fallen asleep.
He sat rigidly still, leaning against the wall by the bed, listening for a repeat of the sound, trying to identify what had awakened him. It was a hiss. Or a growl. Or a light footfall. Something.
For two days he hadn’t slept at all. He hadn’t intended to today either.
His neck was stiff. His butt was asleep.
Doc pressed a hand to his chest. His heart was still pounding, and every nerve in his body hummed.
From the light in the shack, he guessed it was still afternoon.
He shot a glance across the room. The door to the outside was closed.
The road agent called Lucas was not in his usual place, watching every move he made.
Perhaps he’d been awakened when the young outlaw went out. Maybe the sound of the door closing had startled him from his nap.
He turned his head slowly and looked up at his patient. Her head was moving restlessly in the cot, mumbling incoherent words under her breath. She was due to have the dressing on the wound changed again.
A low, raspy, hissing growl from beneath the cot fired a bolt of white-hot lightning through Doc and sent him scuttling backward.
“What the blazes!”
He stared at the shadows beneath the bed for the source of the sound. Black, gleaming eyes stared back at him.
“Get!”
It didn’t move.
He leaned down to get a better look at what was hiding there.
The creature had a tapered snout. A fox?
No, the ears were round and close to the head, giving it the look of a miniature bear’s face.
The fur was thick and golden-brown, too dark and with no raccoon’s mask.
If it were a weasel, it was the largest he’d ever seen.
From one side of its mouth, the head of a fat, lifeless rat dangled, and the rodent’s long tail hung out the other side.
“Get. Go!”
The unwelcome visitor let out a scratchy piercing snarl as it pulled back its lips and showed more of the rat along with vicious fangs and teeth. The animal made a quick, aggressive movement forward. Instinctively, Doc kicked out at it, but he was too far away.
The creature dropped the rat and emitted another screechy snarl, louder and longer than before. Doc reached back, and his hand found an empty medicine bottle. He flung it, but the bottle glanced off the thick fur and skittered harmlessly past.
The thing turned slightly on short nimble legs. The body was at least three feet long and the furry tail twitched nervously. Even glimpsing it in the shadowy recesses beneath the cot, Doc realized what it was. A fisher.
He was suddenly on his feet and across the room without realizing he’d moved. His legs were stiff, but there were plenty of blood roaring in his head.
Doc had only seen one of these before, when he was traveling to see a friend in the Berkshires.
Up there, they called it a fisher cat. Out walking one morning, they’d run into a trapper who had just taken one.
The animal had still been alive when the young hunter went to check his lines, and the bite marks and torn flesh the fisher inflicted on the trapper’s arms were a clear testament to its fearlessness and its ferocious temperament.
And this beast was larger than that one, by far.
Doc didn’t have many options. There was no way he’d go for help and leave his patient alone with the animal.
The woman had no one in this place but him. And whatever else these outlaws intended, Doc Burnett was still a physician before he was a prisoner.
By the stove, a barrel held a few sticks of wood, and he grabbed the largest one. It was only a couple of feet long and thinner than his wrist, but it was the best weapon he had at hand.
Picking up his medical valise, he approached the cot, suddenly feeling like some ridiculous Don Quixote with a leather bag for a shield and a branch as a sword.
He went down on one knee and stabbed at the fisher. The animal sank its sharp, powerful claws into the stick, and Doc was hardly inclined to pull the thing toward him.
He jabbed again, and suddenly, the creature released the stick.
Snatching up the treasured rat in its teeth, it turned and darted toward a far corner of the shack.
In an instant, it disappeared behind a pair of barrels in the corner.
Doc pursued with the upraised stick and cautiously peered over them.
The fisher was gone, escaping through a hole in floor.
Doc dropped his makeshift weapon and shoved one of the barrels over the hole, effectively sealing off the entry.
He backed away, expelling a long breath as his heart took its time and finally slowed. He stretched his back muscles, bent his neck from side to side, feeling as if he’d fought a battle.
He was only glad no one had been around to see his moment of panic.
A thought came so suddenly that it caught him off guard. Sheila. From the letters he’d received, he had a feeling that if his headstrong daughter had been there, she would have laughed first, scolded him second, and then insisted on checking whether he’d been bitten.
Damned, if he didn’t miss her.
There wasn’t enough air in the shack, and Doc went and opened the door, welcoming the cool rush.
Outside, one man was standing by the fire, looking across the wide opening of the camp at the corral, where his buddies seemed to be working to settle the horses in the corral.
He couldn’t see Lucas, but Doc assumed he must be over there.
His patient’s voice grew louder, and Doc grabbed some washed strips of bandage and went back to the cot. Her face was flushed. She seemed more agitated than before. The utterances before were mostly gibberish, but he could make out some of it now.
“Get them… Dark… She’s scared.”
“Who’s scared?”
“Hold her hand… Don’t let go.”
He touched her brow. She was burning with fever.
“Don’t let go of what?” Doc asked.
“No… My daughters… Get them… Get them!” The anguish was clear in her tone.
Standing there, Doc thought again of Sheila.
Where was his daughter now? What was she doing?
It had been some time since she’d written to him.
He was always fairly dutiful in writing back to her as soon as her letters arrived.
But why did he think he needed to wait? He chided himself for that now.
In fact, why hadn’t he planned a trip to New York to see her?
She’d asked more times than he cared to remember.
And in return, he’d promised so often to go, but he never saw it through.
It was a poor kind of fatherhood, he thought, answering letters promptly and calling that devotion.
From the tenor of her most recent letters, he sensed she was no longer very happy living with her grandparents.
Sheila was so much like her mother. She had been from the time she could talk.
Smart and strong-willed. His beautiful Anne.
She’d shown such strength of character when she rebelled against her parents and married him.
Doc knew it was only a matter of time before Sheila did the same thing as her mother.
He walked to where Lucas had brought in a pitcher of water earlier and poured some into a bowl. He carried it back to the cot.
His father-in-law—J. T. Spencer—could be narrow and overbearing, to be sure, but it had been the right thing to do, leaving her in New York.
She was reasonably safe there, much more than she’d ever be in the West. Even so, her letters of late led him to believe she was trying to decide for herself what her future would be.
He didn’t blame her, at all. Hell, he wouldn’t be surprised to hear any day now that she’d run off and married some artist or writer.
After dipping the cloth in the water, he washed his patient’s face.
Doc kicked himself again for not being closer to Sheila as she got older. He wished that, just once, he’d told her—in spite of having spent so much time apart—that he was still her father. She could always reach out to him if she needed help.
And if the Almighty gave him the chance, he would tell her what was in his heart. No speeches. No grand promises. Just the truth. That he loved her, that he had failed her in ways he could no longer deny, and that she was not alone in the world.
“Save them. Please. Save my girls.” Tears ran from the corners of the woman’s eyes and disappeared in her hairline.
Doc patted her tears and prayed to the Lord above that he’d see Sheila again.
Damn. Nothing like seeing the shadow of the Grim Reaper to bring out a man’s regrets.