Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
When Horner and Dodger left the shack, night had been fast approaching, but that was some time ago.
Doc laid a hand on his patient’s forehead.
It was hot, and the bullet wound in her shoulder was looking more inflamed all the time.
As he touched the skin around it, her eyelids flickered and opened for a moment.
She made an effort to speak, but she couldn’t quite manage it before her eyes closed again.
He looked at Lucas. The sheriff had warned him not to touch the young man lying unconscious by the stove. Doc was afraid that if he went against Horner’s orders, it would be worse for the outlaw.
At the sound of someone riding out of the camp, he got up and stood by the open door, looking out at the dark forms silhouetted by the crackling fire.
He counted four. They were talking and arguing about their accomplishments in the gun battle.
He couldn’t tell who was there, or whether the sheriff or Dodger sat among them. He didn’t hear their voices.
He didn’t know who had ridden off in the darkness, and he couldn’t think of a reason why they would go, unless it was to keep watch for intruders.
He scanned the bags and gear piled up near the men, looking for his valise and surgical case, but he couldn’t pick them out.
Lucas moaned, and as Doc looked around at him, he felt his anger and frustration growing.
It wasn’t in him to sit and do nothing while two people were suffering.
Horner’s callousness was worse than despicable.
Even after a battle during the war, most commanders allowed the enemy forces a chance to recover the wounded so they could be tended to.
He looked back out at the men around the fire, wondering what Horner was planning, wondering how it would all end. He didn’t have a good feeling about it.
Lucas stirred by the stove and began to regain consciousness. He was clearly in pain, and Doc could no longer refrain from seeing to the injured gunslinger. Going over, he began to work on the young man.
The bullet had lodged itself in the biceps brachii. Somehow, it hadn’t exited cleanly, but it hadn’t broken the humerus, either. He was lucky about that, anyway.
As Doc worked, Lucas bore the pain with as much courage as any man could hope to demonstrate.
“Don’t let them bastards hurt her,” he said through clenched teeth. “Let her die if you got to, Doc, but don’t let her suffer.”
Mothers and sons, he mused. The relationship between a parent and a child was a complicated one.
If he got through this, the first thing he was going to do was pack a bag, ride to Denver, and board a train for New York. No more letters. No more waiting. He’d surprise Sheila and hold her in his arms, as he should have been doing for too many years.
And if she was angry with him for staying away so long, he’d gladly accept every sharp word she had to give him. It would still mean she was safe. Alive.
“What are they doing?” Lucas asked.
Doc continued to work on the battered face of the young man. When he finished cleaning the cuts and the abrasions, he’d need to straighten that nose.
“What’s going on out there?” the outlaw repeated, trying to sit up.
Doc leaned back and looked out the door. He couldn’t see either Horner or Dodger. “I don’t know. They’ve been gone for a while.”
He again turned his attention to the injured arm.
To save it, he’d need to dig the bullet out soon.
Dodger said the medical supplies and equipment were outside.
He considered going out to fetch his things.
To slow the bleeding for now, he grabbed one of the washed bandages, put it over the wound, and wrapped the young man’s own bandana tightly around it.
“I got a knife in my boot,” Lucas told him. “If you’d stand me on my feet near the door, I can kill one of them when they come back in. Maybe both them. You can grab for their guns and—”
“Hush. Somebody’s coming.”
Horner strode back into the shack and scoffed at the sight of Doc bent over the wounded man. “No point in that.”
“He’s bleeding to death.”
The sheriff kicked an empty barrel across the floor, where it banged hard against the wall and rolled away.
“I don’t give a damn,” he shouted. “He ain’t gonna…”
Horner stopped abruptly. He was staring at Mrs. Fields. Doc saw it too. The woman had flinched when he kicked the barrel.
“She’s awake.”
The sheriff moved to the cot, and Doc got there right after him. The patient’s eyes were closed. She said something under her breath and rolled her head from side to side.
“Wake up,” Horner poked her on the arm.
“She’s hallucinating. It’s the fever.”
“I say she ain’t doing nothing but faking it.”
“Feel her forehead. Have you never seen a sick person in your entire life?”
Mrs. Fields’s face was flushed, her hairline and the collar of her dress were soaked with sweat. Doc laid his hand on her forehead.
“The woman is burning up. No one can fake this, Horner.”
The sheriff’s hands rested on his pistols, and he kept his eye on her. “When will this stuff you gave her wear off?”
“I told you, maybe tomorrow morning.”
“There’s gotta be a way you can wake her up sooner.”
“There isn’t.” Doc decided he needed to change things up a little. “Who is she, anyway?”
“I told you before. It ain’t your concern.”
“Dodger said I don’t know something. What is it?”
Horner ignored the question, continuing to stare at her face, waiting for her to flinch or show some hint that she was conscious.
Doc motioned toward Lucas, lying on the floor. “Why are these outlaws…and you…so eager for her to get better?”
“She can die, for all I care. But I want to talk to her before she does.”
“Why?”
“You really don’t know?”
Doc ran a weary hand over his face. He hadn’t shaved in days. He’d barely slept. “I reckon she’s someone they planned to use to collect ransom. That’s why they kidnapped her and brought me to see to her wound. But if you’re telling me something different…”
“She’s Mrs. Fields.”
Doc gave him the blankest look he could muster. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“She’s the head of this outfit.”
Horner was always fond of running his mouth, and Doc decided to keep him going. He wanted to learn more about her, but he also wanted draw the man’s attention away from her face.
“That’s impossible.”
“And she’s sitting on her loot, Doc. A fortune in loot.”
“What are you talking about?”
Horner shot him a look of superiority. “I’m talking about what I know from a drifter up north.
Said he rode with her gang. ’Course, I don’t believe that.
The fool also claimed that he rode with Quantrill, the James boys, and even Dirty Dave Rudabaugh.
He was a lazy, lying sumbitch. Dead now.
He threw down on me in a card game, and I gunned him down like the filthy dog he was.
But I’d known about the Fields gang for a long time, and what he said fit. ”
“Well, I’ve never heard of the Fields gang.”
“That’s cuz they got themselves going out in Montana.” He nodded at Mrs. Fields. “This one’s husband got into a beef with some Wells Fargo men in the gold fields out there. They done killed him and her son…her older son.”
He spat on the floor and looked at Lucas.
“That right, boy?” When the young outlaw said nothing, the sheriff strode over and kicked him in the arm. “This one’s her other boy.”
Lucas was writhing from the pain, and Doc instinctively took a step toward him. The young gun warned him off with a look.
“And this fortune you think she’s sitting on came from her husband?”
Horner walked back to the cot, looking at Doc like he was the village idiot. “Hell, no. With her husband and boy dead, she wants revenge. She starts her own gang hitting Wells Fargo stages.”
Doc shook his head. “I believe someone has sold you a bill of goods, Horner. There is no way this woman, at her age, could be a stagecoach robber.”
The sheriff glanced down at her once more and then strutted toward the door. “Don’t matter what you believe, sawbones. It’s the truth. Fifty robberies from California to Colorado. Maybe more. And that’s a lot of money stashed up here somewheres.”
Doc recalled her words earlier. I haven’t a dollar to my name.
“I figure she’s hiding her take close by,” Horner told him.
“And you think she’ll tell you where it is?”
“She will cuz I have her son. And she ain’t gonna sit still while he gets skinned alive in front of her eyes.”
“What kind of a brute…?” Doc reined in his temper. “I don’t believe you’d do such a thing.”
“Oh, I ain’t doing it, Doc. You are.”
He took a step backward. “I’ll be damned before I do.”
“Then damned you’ll be.” The sheriff grinned maliciously. “Cuz you’ll be breaking out your skinning knives as soon as Dodger comes back…with your daughter.”
“My daughter?” Doc’s stomach dropped. Anger roared in, replacing his shock. He could tear Horner’s throat out…but what if he was telling the truth? “But she’s—”
“The lovely Miss Sheila Burnett come in on the Wednesday stagecoach from Denver. And she was in Elkhorn until this very morning. Dodger and the man you sent for your surgical things found her in your house and decided she was too pretty to leave behind.”
For a heartbeat, the room tilted around him.
Sheila.
Not safe in New York. Not protected by distance and polite society and brick walls and civilized streets. Out here. In these mountains. In the hands of animals.
The doctor felt the blood drain from his head, and a cold, sick feeling gripped his stomach. His hand went into his pocket and closed around the handle of the scalpel. He’d kill these bastards. But before they died, he’d make them suffer far more than anything they could imagine.
“If you touch my daughter, if there is one hair—”
“Shut it, Doc. That don’t mean nothing to me. Dodger is the one bringing her here, and believe me, he’s keen as mustard to keep her.”
Lucas lifted his battered head from the floor at those words. Even through swollen eyes and bloodied lips, fury blazed across his face.
“If he hurts her in any way, I’ll kill him and then I’ll kill you.”
“I’m quaking in my boots, Doc.” Horner laughed. “But I’ll tell you what. I ain’t unreasonable. Maybe we can come to an understanding, you and me.”
He spat on the floor again.
“But while we wait, you go ahead and start sharpening them knives.”