Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Lucas has been shot in the arm,” Doc told his patient.
“Go out to him,” Mrs. Fields pleaded.
“I can’t right now.”
From the shadows, he peered through the doorway. The light was fading, and the darkness was deepening in the surrounding hills. Lucas was surrounded by the men Sheriff Horner had with him. The conversation was not friendly.
“At least he’s alive.”
“Thank God,” she murmured. “What about my other men? Can you see them?”
Doc looked at the outlaw lying dead by the trough. There was no sign of the fellow who’d been up watching for intruders, the one they called Jeb. He guessed he’d been the first to face Horner and the first to die.
He glanced at his patient. “I’d be surprised if any of them have survived.”
“They’re dead?” Her face clenched with a pain that had nothing to do with her own bullet wound. “All of them?”
“I wouldn’t hold out much hope for them.” He peered out, trying to make sense of what they were doing to Lucas.
“Perhaps Wendell and Dodger got away.”
“I can’t say about Wendell, but Dodger is out there, big as life. He seems to have led Sheriff Horner right to your door.”
“Dodger? I shouldn’t be surprised.” She clutched the blanket. “We only hired him for this last job. He’s a nasty young man.”
“Well, you’re right about that.”
“If he’s working for the sheriff, he probably turned Wendell in.”
Or killed him, Doc thought. Dodger was cold and heartless.
“Poor Wendell. They’ll hang him for sure.” She sighed bitterly. “I suppose we’ll all hang.”
The outlaws were asking Lucas questions outside about where the loot was hidden. And they weren’t doing it gently. The young man didn’t appear to be answering anything.
“I’m not so sure that’s what Horner has in mind.”
Doc frowned thoughtfully at his patient. As weak and feverish as she was, Mrs. Fields was clearly a well-spoken woman. It still amazed him that she could be the leader of a gang of stagecoach robbers. Be that as it may, if they were to somehow miraculously survive, he needed to know more about her.
“Who knows you’re the leader?” he asked.
“Everyone who worked for me. But it was a secret they’d all sworn to keep. And I trusted them. I should say, I trusted all but…” The name withered on her lips. “Wendell was supposed to keep a close eye on him.”
“Not close enough, I’d reckon.”
Doc had known many men in his life like Dodger. They’d swear to anything. But if money was involved, they’d deny they ever made a promise. Men with no sense of honor. They’d kill their brother for a ten-dollar gold piece.
And Dodger would kill for far less. He’d seen it with his own eyes.
They were hurting Lucas badly now, trying to break him with blows and threats. Doc knew that as soon as they tired of that sport…or killed the boy…they’d be coming this way.
He forced himself not to look again. A physician’s instinct was to go to the injured, but charging into that circle of men would help no one. Not Lucas. Not Mrs. Fields. Not himself.
He went to her and picked up the bottle containing the last of the morphine and brought it to her lips. “I want you to drink what’s left and—”
“I can’t.” She shook her head, fighting him. “I need to help Lucas. If I talk to them… I can’t if I’m drugged.”
Doc took hold of her arm and looked sternly at her. “That may be the only way you can save him.”
“What do you mean?”
He had a thousand questions and no time to ask them.
“Horner has thrown away his badge. From what I’m seeing, he’s working for himself. He and Dodger are trying to get Lucas to tell them where you’ve hidden the gang’s stolen money. Does your son know where it is?”
“Only what we took during this last robbery.”
“It sounds like they’re looking for more than that.”
“Everything we’ve taken from Wells Fargo for the past five years was divided among the men, except for a share that I kept and put away. Lucas doesn’t know what I did with that money.”
The voices outside were getting louder, more insistent.
“How much do they think you’re hiding?”
“The men told me that rumors have spread, exaggerating the truth. They say people believe we have a half million or more in gold and paper currency buried somewhere.”
Doc’s head swam with the number. Even if she had a fraction of that amount, she’d need an army to protect her.
“I have no interest in your money,” he said. “But you need to tell me something of the truth, so I know what to do when I face these men. Otherwise, I don’t know how I can protect you and your son.”
He didn’t want to share his fears with her, but Doc was thinking of this rogue sheriff. Loot or no loot, he had a feeling their chances of survival were shrinking.
In spite of her fever, the deep-brown eyes were earnest and the gaze steady. “I trust you, Dr. Burnett.”
He nodded. “Is the fortune nearby? Is it hidden somewhere around this camp? Could they drag you around the camp until you showed them where?”
“I haven’t a dollar to my name. There’s no money or gold left.”
He stared at her, not believing what she said. But why should she trust him? “I understand your hesitation, even though you say you trust me.”
“I mean what I say. There is no fortune.”
Again, she knocked the wind out of him. Questions arose in his mind, but he silenced them. Lucas cried out in pain, and Mrs. Fields’s face turned to the door.
“Whether there is or there isn’t, these men believe you have that fortune. They want it, and I think they’ll do anything to get it.”
Certainly, murder was not beyond them.
“I’m asking because if they think they can beat the truth out of Lucas…or you…we’re in deep—perhaps fatal—trouble. However, if they think the money is somewhere distant and they need you to take them there, then we can use that for leverage and force them to keep you both alive.”
Dodger’s voice lifted above the others outside. “Like I told you, he don’t know nothing. It’s the mother we gotta squeeze.”
Lucas’s pained response was muffled, but Doc could hear the note of impassioned pleading.
He had to hurry. Half-baked plans formed in his head.
“Do you understand? If you physically cannot answer their questions, and your survival is questionable, then they need to keep Lucas alive.”
She closed her eyes and then shook her head. “But for how long?”
“I don’t know. All I’m trying to do right now is to buy us some time.” He lifted the bottle to her lips again. “Drink this.”
“It doesn’t make me sleep. I just drift in a dream somewhere. But over these past few days, I still heard most of what you and my son said to each other.”
“Then pretend. Play possum. You have all the symptoms of a dying woman.” As she should, he thought, keeping this to himself. “Giving them any information won’t save our skins. Yours, mine, or your son’s.”
Footsteps were approaching the door.
“Do as I say,” he urged her. “Trust me, and we may be able to save your son’s life.”
For one fleeting moment, he thought of the trust he had failed to earn from his own daughter since his wife died. Then he pushed the thought aside. This was not the hour for regret. It was the hour to keep someone’s child alive.
The woman nodded, and she drank what was left of the sedative. He pocketed the empty bottle.
“Now close your eyes,” he ordered.
Mrs. Fields did as she was told, and barely a second later, men barged into the shack.
“See here, Sheriff,” Doc said sharply as he stood to face the man. “I have a wounded woman here.”
Horner ignored him and looked past him to Mrs. Fields, lying on the cot. Behind him, Dodger and another man dragged Lucas in and dumped him unceremoniously at Doc’s feet. Two other ruffians that he recognized as the sheriff’s deputies crowded in as well.
“I’m telling you I won’t have you and your men parading through,” he said, stepping between Horner and Mrs. Fields.
Horner looked at him, spat on the floor, and cleaned some tobacco juice off his drooping mustache with the back of his hand.
He turned to his men. “You and you, go bring the horses up and bed ’em down in that there corral.” As the two men went out, he gestured to the one who’d helped bring Lucas in. “You get out there and keep watch. And drag that carcass off somewheres. I don’t want to be tripping over him.”
That left only Horner and Dodger in the shack.
Lucas groaned, and Doc immediately knelt beside him, inspecting the extent of the young man’s injuries.
A bullet was still embedded in the arm, but the bone didn’t appear to have shattered.
His nose was bent at a bad angle, and his eyes were already swollen shut from the blows delivered to his face.
And this was only what he could see. At least he was alive.
“Lie still,” Doc murmured, more gently than he intended. But outlaw or not, the boy was someone’s son.
“Well, Doc,” Horner said over his head. “Glad to find you here.”
He pushed to his feet and looked into the man’s foul face. “I wish I could say the same.”
The sheriff hitched up his trousers. “We come all the way out here to save your hide, and that’s the thanks we get?”
“I heard you out there, and the way I see it, you came out here to line your pockets.”
“You ain’t got no call saying that, Doc. We’re here to rescue you and recover stolen property.” He spat on the floor again. “But it sounds like you don’t trust me.”
“I wouldn’t trust you to recover a pig’s ear from a privy hole.”
A dangerous look came into Horner’s eye, but Doc was beyond caring about that. He hadn’t trusted this man from the first moment he met him.
He scoffed at the tin star on the man’s chest. “Don’t you think you should throw that thing away if you’re done serving the law?”
“What makes you think the judge ain’t sent me?”
He motioned to Dodger. “You’re standing next to this deranged pup, for one thing.”
The young killer took a threatening step toward Doc, but Horner put his arm out, stopping him.
“So you’re here. You have your outlaw.” Doc gestured to Lucas, lying nearly unconscious at his feet. “What else do you want?”
Horner took a step to the side to look at Mrs. Fields. Doc so hoped the woman was doing a good job pretending to be asleep.
The sheriff turned to Dodger. “He don’t know?”
The young outlaw shook his head. “Don’t think so.”
“I don’t know what?” Doc asked.
Horner nodded toward the woman. “You know who she is?”
“They told me she was a passenger on the stagecoach. She was wounded when these cowards robbed it.”
Horner exchanged a look with Dodger, who was glaring at Doc. He clearly didn’t like being called deranged or a coward.
“Did you fetch my surgical instruments from the house?”
“They’re outside. How about you and me go out and fetch them together?”
“Never mind that,” Horner snapped, asserting his authority. He moved toward the cot. “I need to talk to her.”
“This woman is doing very poorly. In fact, she’s dying. That’s why I sent this one and his friend to Elkhorn for my supplies. If I don’t operate, she might not live even two days.”
“I don’t care if she don’t live two minutes. I need to talk to her.”
“Why?”
“That ain’t your concern.”
Doc frowned at the man. “Well, it’s not possible. My patient has been enduring tremendous pain, so I gave her all the morphine I had left.”
He took the empty bottle from his pocket, showing it to him.
Horner pushed him aside and stood over Mrs. Fields, watching her heavy breathing.
Beads of sweat covered her brow. Her face was flushed.
Her fever wasn’t something she was faking.
Horner reached down and shook her hand. There was no reaction.
Doc had to give the woman credit. She showed no signs of awareness at all.
“Wake her.”
“I can’t, but the dose I gave her will wear off before long. She’ll come around soon enough.”
“How soon?”
How long would it take before someone came to their rescue?
Doc knew he was wishing for the impossible.
Mrs. Fields and her gang had been hiding out here for ages, and no one had found them out.
In the five days he’d been here, only one poor fellow had wandered through.
Other than that, no one had come but these villains, and they were led here by Dodger.
Still, he wasn’t about to make it easy for them.
“Maybe by morning. Unless she dies first.”
And if God had any mercy left for any of them, morning would bring more than Horner waiting at her bedside.