Chapter 55
COUGHING, STRUGGLING FOR AIR, Josephine couldn’t stop shaking. Her eyes burned and hot throbs of pain pulsed in her right hand.
“Doc Wyatt, over here!” Dodge yelled, his voice strained. He lowered her to the ground as smoke and flames blurred the night sky. Men and women raced back and forth, shouting. Others stood stock-still, watching.
Doc Wyatt knelt beside them. “Was she in the building?”
“Yes, sir, I just carried her out.”
The doctor leaned close. “Mrs. Dunham, if you can hear me, can you tell me if you’re hurt?”
“My hand,” she managed, her throat raw, jaw quivering. Not wanting to, she brought her right arm away from her chest and opened her palm.
Doc’s expression was a smooth mask, Dodge’s was far less so. Doc Wyatt started rummaging through his bag. Dodge took off his suit coat and draped it over her.
He leaned close, cradling her face, his own smudged with soot. “I’m so sorry, Josephine,” he whispered, his voice unusually fragile. “I should have been here for you. But you’re safe now. You’re going to be all right.”
“We need a bucket of water from the spring, Dodge. Fast as you can.”
Dodge brushed a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll be right back.”
She watched him go, not wanting him to leave. Despite having his coat, she couldn’t stop shaking. The faint click of glass bottles, the potent scent of camphor, and a sharp metallic odor layered the smoky air.
“Mrs. Dunham, are you still with me?” Doc Wyatt asked.
She blinked, her head swimming but pain keeping her conscious. “Yes . . . I’m here.”
“I’m here to help you. If you’ve been . . . injured in any other way, you can tell me.”
The hesitance in his voice made her question, and she closed her eyes in an attempt to take inventory. Every part of her hurt, then she remembered. “H-he hit me . . . in the lower back . . . with a rolling pin.” Just remembering the pain, and the sound, brought fresh emotion.
A thud and the slosh of water, and she opened her eyes to see Dodge kneeling beside her again. His breath came hard from the run, but something else in him had changed. Anger rolled off him.
“I’d like to give you a thorough examination later, Mrs. Dunham,” Doc Wyatt said quietly. “But for now, Dodge, give her a quick drink then I need to cool down the wound.”
Dodge held the cup to her lips and she drank, the cold spring water working its way down and reminding her of the first day they’d met, when he’d offered her water from a stream. She saw the same memory in his eyes.
“Now, Mrs. Dunham, please stretch out your arm. Yes, just like that. Dodge, I need you to keep her arm still, please.”
She tensed, bracing herself as the doctor ladled a cup of water from the bucket.
“I’ll be quick, ma’am.”
She gritted her teeth, trying not to scream, and failing. Instinctively, she tried to pull away but Dodge held her arm fast as the doctor poured again and again.
Dodge leaned close. “I know it hurts. It’ll be over soon.”
Tears slid from the corners of her eyes as stabs of pain pulsed up her arm. “Thank you for coming when you did,” she managed, stifling a groan.
“We heard gunshots. I looked for you at Uncle Jack’s, but couldn’t find you.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but pain flared across her hand again, taking her breath with it.
“Soap to clean the wound,” Doc Wyatt said softly. “I’m being as gentle as I can.”
Dodge reached for her other hand and held it tight.
Drawing strength from his grip, she looked beyond him to the flames devouring the stillhouse and to the partygoers and locals passing buckets of water in a frantic chain. She spotted Mr. Daniel among them, unmistakable even in the chaos, helping alongside everyone else.
Another explosion sounded from within the building, and she flinched. Even knowing Clay Darden could no longer harm her, fear still clung to her. She could feel it on her skin and taste it on her tongue. But she tried to find comfort in—
Something moved in the doorway of the stillhouse, the silhouette of a—
No. It couldn’t be . . . She tried to raise up.
“Josephine, you need to lie still. The doc is—”
“It’s him,” she whispered, a chill gripping her chest. “But how? H-how can he—”
Dodge looked back just as Darden staggered through the door of the burning building then collapsed. Men raced to douse the flames on his clothing, then dragged his body clear of the fire.
“Doc!” a man yelled. “We need you over here!”
“Mrs. Dunham, one last step for now. Tincture of iodine. This must be applied carefully. It will not be pleasant, but again, I will be quick.”
She gripped Dodge’s hand as tightly as she could, the sharp scent of iodine registering just before the pain. She would have screamed if she’d had air left in her lungs.
“There, that should prevent infection in the short term. I’ll do more, but the wound needs to air. I do have laudanum if you—”
She shook her head, laudanum containing alcohol. Plus, the last thing she wanted—with Clay Darden still alive—was for her senses to be dulled.
“All right then. I’ll be back shortly to apply a salve that’ll help with the pain.”
He packed his satchel and hurried away, and she struggled to see Clay Darden through the crowd, same as Dodge. Not until Doc Wyatt knelt down beside him could they get a clear view. Darden was not moving.
Dodge leaned down and kissed her forehead, once, twice. “I’m so sorry, Josephine.” He brushed the hair back from her face. “I should have been here. Are you . . . all right?”
She nodded. “It hurts, but I think what Doc Wyatt did is helping.”
“No. What I’m asking is—” Whatever it was, the words didn’t seem to want to leave him. “Did Darden hurt you?”
Catching the echo of Doc Wyatt’s earlier question in Dodge’s now, the meaning behind the word swiftly became clear. But it was the unmistakable love in Dodge’s voice—in the gentleness with which he touched her—that brought a sob.
“Oh God . . .” He bowed his head. “I’ll kill him.”
She forced his gaze back to hers. “No, Dodge. He did not hurt me. Not like that.”
He stared as if not believing her. “But the bodice of your dress is—it’s ripped, so I thought—”
She looked down at his suit jacket as memory tripped back over itself to that moment in the kitchen.
“Darden hit me and I fell. I remember him dragging me up by the front of my dress. It must have torn then.” She cradled his cheek.
“But he did not hurt me in that way.” Her chin trembled, and she doubted her voice would hold. “But he did try.”
A deep exhale, and he brought her hand clasped in his to his mouth and kissed it hard, then looked back to where Doc Wyatt continued to work on Darden. “Tell me what happened.”
The steel in his voice warned her against trying to spare him any detail.
“I was leaving the party and tried to leave through the front door, but there were too many people. I couldn’t get out.
So I decided to find the kitchen and leave that way .
. .” She told him everything and he never looked away. Not once.
By the time she finished, she felt empty of tears. Not only from having to relive the experience, but from reliving it through his eyes.
“Uncle Dodge!”
They turned to see Bethie running straight for them, Jessie hot on her heels, and Miss Mary and Calla a short distance behind.
“Would you help me sit up, please?” Josephine asked, and he slowly eased her upright then covered her again with his coat. She painstakingly slipped her injured hand into her lap, clenching her jaw against the pain.
Bethie threw her arms around his neck. “Are you okay, Uncle Dodge?”
“I’m fine, Bethie girl.” He held her tight, then gave Jessie a rub. “But Mrs. Dunham is hurt.”
Concern knit the girl’s brow. “Anything I can do for you, ma’am?”
“You just did, Bethie. Thank you.” Her head swam a little, and she took deep breaths, aware of Dodge watching her.
Bethie regaled them with how she and others at Miss Mary’s had heard what sounded like a thunderclap. “We were all sitting there in the kitchen, then got up and ran to the street. That’s when we saw the smoke.”
Miss Mary and Calla joined them, Miss Mary kneeling down. “Josephine, are you all right? Dodge, what happened?”
Calla came alongside. “People saying the stills must’ve got too hot and blew to—”
A whooshing sound like wind rushing through a tunnel, then a sharp crack—and the roof of the stillhouse collapsed. Flames hissed as embers shot high into the night sky. Boarding house tenants stood a few yards away—Tom Motlow, Roughton Waggoner, Mr. Parks, Miss Livvy, and others—watching it all.
“Some of the stills did blow up,” Dodge said. “But we’ll need time to sort out all the details.” He glanced at Bethie, obviously choosing his words carefully. “Mrs. Dunham’s hand got badly burned and—” He paused mid-sentence, his eyes narrowing.
Josephine quickly trailed his gaze and couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Clay Darden lifted his head, his arms flailing as though he were trying to fend off some unseen enemy. Doc Wyatt barked an order, and a group of men lifted him and hurriedly carried him toward town.
“Who is that?” Bethie asked. “Did he get burned too?”
“My questions exactly,” Miss Mary added.
“We can talk more about that after we get Mrs. Dunham back to the boarding house.” Dodge carefully helped her up. “I can carry you,” he whispered.
“No, I can walk.”
“Oh Josephine!” Calla gasped. “Your palm!”
Miss Mary looked down, grimacing.
“Yes, I . . . I burned it inside the stillhouse.”
“Josephine, that’s not just a burn. What on earth—”
“Miss Mary!” Dodge looked toward town. “Would you please lead the way? Mrs. Dunham has been through a great deal tonight and needs to rest.”
Miss Mary, obviously not accustomed to Dodge interrupting her, much less being so terse, nodded. Josephine thanked him with a look.
They hadn’t yet reached the town square when she felt the night starting to swirl around her. “Dodge, I don’t think I—”
He lifted her in his arms and held her close against his chest, the solid beat of his heart matching the ever-present tick tick tick inside her.