The Outlaw And The Runaway. Tatiana March

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       Chapter Three

      Roy hung grimly in the saddle, pain burning in his shoulder, the blood-soaked shirt sticking to his back, cold shivers racking him. He ought to have packed his wound to stem the bleeding, but he daren’t stop, not even to take off the itchy black wig and put his hat on.

      He’d slipped the cotton patch back in its place, to protect his brown eye, unused to daylight, from the glare of the sun. Already, his body was shutting down, making him light-headed and giving him a tunnel vision that closed out everything except the trail ahead that led to a place of safety.

      At last, the small log cabin, half dug into the hillside, with an earth roof over it, hovered in his sights. With one final burst of effort, Roy urged Dagur up the path, reined in and slid down from the saddle. He stumbled to the entrance and kicked the door open. Ducking his head, he stepped in through the low frame and pulled the buckskin inside after him, then kicked the door shut again.

      Darkness filled the cramped space. The horse gave a frightened whinny. Leaning against the heavy flank of the animal to steady himself, Roy stroked the lathered coat.

      “Easy, boy. Easy now, Dagur. We’re safe.”

      He tugged aside the patch that covered his brown eye. Protected from light, the eye needed no time to adjust to the darkness, allowing Roy to survey his surroundings.

      The place was just as he’d left it two weeks ago. Sturdy log walls, floor of hard-packed earth swept clean, the single window firmly shuttered. Some previous occupant must have burned any remaining furniture for firewood, but they had left the water barrel that stood in the corner next to the primitive stone chimney.

      A standard-sized whiskey barrel, it held fifty-three gallons. During his earlier visits Roy had painstakingly cleaned the timber container and filled it from the spring outside, spending hours shuttling to and fro with nothing but a canteen to transport the water.

      To complete his preparations, he’d gathered firewood into a tall stack along the rear wall, and with handfuls of desert sand and grit he had scrubbed away the layer of grease from the rusty iron pot that stood on tripod legs inside the stone hearth.

      Now he turned to Dagur and pulled his hat from the folds of his bedroll where he had tucked it away, pushed the crown back into shape and sank to his knees beside the water barrel. Using a piece of firewood to knock loose the wooden plug, he lined his hat beneath the hole in the barrel and filled the hollow of the crown to the brim. After replacing the plug on the side of the barrel, Roy held up the hat for the buckskin to drink.

      “Good boy,” he murmured. “Rest now. Later, when it gets dark, I’ll let you out to graze. There’s a strip of grama beyond the spring, much better than the desert grass you’ve been eating recently.”

      The horse blew and snorted, as if to agree. Twice more, Roy filled his hat and let Dagur drink. Then he took out his canteen and quenched his own thirst. After allowing himself a moment of rest, he poured water into the iron pot in the hearth, arranged firewood beneath the tripod legs and took out his tin of matches to start a fire.

      The pain closed around him, burning like a hot poker in his shoulder and streaking down his side with every move he made. He needed to get the wound cleaned and dressed before he passed out. The bullet wouldn’t kill him, but the fever that followed might, if he didn’t manage to stem the bleeding and prevent an infection.

      As the flames caught in the hearth, a warm yellow glow danced over the log walls. The reassuring scents of wood smoke and pine resin, familiar from a thousand campfires, filled the cabin. Roy imagined primitive man, living in caves, hunting and gathering. For him, a bonfire must have meant life, just as much as water and food did, and more—a fire must have been the first step toward civilization, mastering the elements of nature.

      Sitting cross-legged in front of the stone chimney, Roy pulled a knife from the scabbard in his boot and sliced away his shirt. Easier than trying to lift his arms overhead to undress. The coarse white cotton was matted with blood but the bleeding had slowed to a trickle.

      Gently, Roy felt the wound in his shoulder with his fingertips. There was no exit hole, but high up on the front he could feel a small lump beneath the skin. The surge of relief nearly made him faint. From the way he’d been able to move his arm, he’d known the bone remained intact, but had the bullet lodged deeper inside his shoulder, it might have been impossible for him to remove.

      Leaning toward the fire, Roy enjoyed the comfort of heat while he held the tip of his knife to the flames to purify it. When he was satisfied the blade was clean, he made a small incision at the front of his shoulder, in the fleshy part where the muscle sloped toward the neck, to create an exit wound. With pressure from his fingertips, the bullet slid out.

      It was a .36 caliber homemade lead ball. Despite the small size, had the bullet struck lower, it would have shattered the bone, most likely leaving too many fragments to remove. And even if Roy hadn’t already known, the small lead ball would have revealed the shooter to be Lom Curtis. Short and slight, the leader of the outlaw gang liked his pair of lightweight Navy Colts and had never switched to more powerful weapons or jacketed ammunition.

      Roy tossed the bullet into the fire and inspected the remains of his shirt, assembling the back panel like a jigsaw puzzle. A small circular piece was missing. He swore. During his years on the outlaw trail, he’d seen plenty of doctoring for gunshot wounds, both by qualified surgeons and by anyone with a knife and a steady hand, and he understood that a piece of fabric left inside the wound could kill as effectively as a vial of poison.

      Behind him, Dagur was snoring, asleep on his feet. Roy twisted around and raised his voice. “Dagur, sit down.”

      The horse blinked his eyes open, gave a protesting whinny but folded his legs and sank to the earth floor. Roy reached over and tugged his saddlebags free. Summoning all his strength, he loosened the cinch on the saddle girth and pulled the weight off the horse, letting the saddle tumble to the ground.

      “It’s okay, boy,” Roy said. “Go to sleep.” With another whinny, Dagur rolled over to his side and extended his legs, filling half the cabin, and resumed his snoring.

      Roy tore a section from the clean part of his shirt and spread the piece of fabric on the earth floor. From his saddlebags, he took out a piece of rawhide string, a flask of whiskey and a bottle of kerosene, and a needle. Moving stiffly, СКАЧАТЬ