Mail Order Cowboy. Laurie Kingery

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СКАЧАТЬ the barn and the empty corral. He was pallid as a corpse, his shirt saturated with dark dried blood. A deep gash bisected his upper forehead, dyeing his gray hair a dark crimson. A feathered shaft was embedded in each shoulder, pinning his torso to the ground, and his left pants leg was slashed midthigh. She caught a glimpse of a long, deep laceration beneath. Not far away, a corner of the barn still burned with crackling intensity. It was a miracle flying sparks hadn’t set Josh’s clothes alight.

      And then she saw that Josh’s chest was rising and falling.

      “Josh?” she called, softly at first, afraid to trust her eyes, then louder, “Josh?”

      His answer was a groan.

      She rushed past Brookfield, falling to her knees beside the fallen cowboy. “Josh, it’s me, Milly. Can you hear me?” Gingerly, she touched his face, not wanting to cause him any extra pain.

      Josh’s eyelids fluttered and then he opened one eye, blinking as he attempted to focus his gaze. “Miss Milly…sorry…I caught them redskins stealin’ cattle…tried to drive ’em off with the rifle…” He squinted at the ground on his right side and sighed. “Looks like they got that, too. St-started…they started t’ take my scalp…dunno what stopped ’em from finishin’…”

      “Thank God,” Milly murmured. But Josh couldn’t hear her. He’d passed out again.

      “Bobby, go get me some water from the well,” Milly called over her shoulder. “And tell Sarah and Caroline to bring soap and a couple of clean sheets to make up the bed in the spare room for Josh.”

      “And Bobby, bring me a couple of knives,” Brookfield called out, pulling off his black frock coat and throwing it over a fencepost in the nearby corral. He rolled up his sleeves past his elbows, revealing tanned, muscular arms. “And some whiskey if you can find it. Or any kind of liquor.”

      Milly turned startled eyes to him and saw that he knelt in the dirt beside her, oblivious of his immaculate white shirt and black trousers. “Mr. Brookfield, what are you going to do?”

      With his bare hands, he was digging into the dirt beside Josh’s wounded shoulder. “Before he comes around, I’m going to cut off the arrowheads. There’s no way we can pull the arrow shafts out otherwise without injuring him further.”

      “Are you a doctor, Mr. Brookfield?”

      He shook his head without looking at her, still digging in the dirt.

      “Shouldn’t we wait ’til the doctor gets here to do that?”

      He shook his head again. “You can’t even move the man to a bed until we pull out those arrows. I’ve seen the regimental doctor remove a spear from an unlucky sepoy before, if that makes you feel better.”

      He didn’t explain what a sepoy was, or if the sepoy had lived through the procedure, but she didn’t have any better idea. And Dan Wallace might not find the doctor right away. They didn’t dare wait.

      “I suppose you’re right—you’d better go ahead. But even if Josh comes around, we don’t have any whiskey or any other kind of spirits. Papa didn’t hold with drinking.”

      “It’d be to pour on the wounds mostly, though if he regains his senses I’ll be giving him some to drink,” the Englishman answered, with that purposeful calm he’d exhibited ever since they’d received the awful news.

      Just then Bobby dashed back, a pair of knives from the kitchen clutched in one hand, a half-full bottle of whiskey in the other.

      Milly’s jaw dropped. “Bobby, where on earth did you get that?”

      Bobby scuffed the toe of his boot in the dust and refused to meet her eyes. “Mr. Josh, he had some in the bunkhouse. He didn’t drink it very often,” he added in a defensive tone, “an’ never ’til the day’s work was done. He never would let me have any, neither. Said I wasn’t a man growed yet. He said I wasn’t to tell you, but I reckon I needed t’ break that promise.”

      “That’s fine, Bobby,” Nicholas Brookfield said, taking the bottle from him. “Now go hold one of the knife blades in the fire for a minute.”

      After the boy did as he was bid and returned with the knife, its tip still glowing red.

      “Now you hold the hot knife, Miss Matthews—don’t let it touch anything, while you, Bobby, hold Mr. Josh by the shoulder, just so…”

      Obediently, she held the knife, watching as Bobby braced one of Josh’s shoulders, holding it just far enough above the ground so that the arrow shaft was visible, while Brookfield sawed at the arrow shaft until he had cut it in two, then shifted the wounded man slightly so that he was no longer lying over the arrowhead and the tip of the shaft that was still embedded in the ground. Although Josh groaned, he did not wake up.

      Brookfield and Bobby switched sides.

      Caroline came from the house then, lugging a bucket of water that splashed droplets out the side with each step she took. “I thought it best to set Sarah to making up the bed in your spare room…” She stopped stock-still when she caught sight of Josh. “Heaven have mercy, he’s in a bad way, isn’t he? I was afraid she’d faint if she saw him like this.”

      Milly nodded, knowing Caroline was right. She’d felt dizzy herself, just looking at all that blood, but knew fainting was a luxury she didn’t have. Josh needed her to be steady right now and help Nicholas Brookfield.

      The Englishman had cut the other shaft away while she spoke to Caroline and was pouring the whiskey liberally over the wounds and his hands now. “I should have told you, but I’m going to need some bandages here as well. These wounds are liable to bleed when I pull the arrow shafts out.”

      Milly raced into the house, but Sarah had made the bed and had only just begun to rip the other sheet into strips for bandages.

      “Milly, how is he? Is he going to make it?” Sarah’s face was still pale, her eyes frightened.

      “I don’t know, Sarah. Hurry up with the bandages, will you? We’re going to need a lot of them,” Milly said, and dashed back to where Brookfield and Caroline waited for her. “She doesn’t have them ready yet.”

      The Englishman frowned. “I have a handkerchief,” he said, pulling a folded square of spotless linen from his breast pocket. “But we’ll need something for the other side.”

      She knew she could send Caroline back to the house and hope that Sarah had some strips of cloth ready by now, but Caroline had sat down, facing away from the wounded man, and was looking a bit green herself. Brookfield looked at her expectantly.

      “Wait just a moment,” she said, and turning around so that her back was to Brookfield, reached up under her skirts and began ripping the flounces off her petticoat. She wondered what he must be thinking. Surely the well-brought-up young ladies of England would never have done such a thing, but then, they didn’t face Comanche attacks, did they?

      His cool eyes held an element of admiration when she turned around again and showed him the wadded-up flounce.

      “Good thinking, Miss Matthews. Do you think you could kneel by Josh’s head and stand ready to apply the bandage quickly, as soon as I pull the first shaft out? I’ll move quickly on to the other one, then. Bobby, you hold СКАЧАТЬ