Love's Bounty

by Rosanne Bittner

  “It was…brave enough…all right.”

  Callie grimaced with her own pain as he leaned heavily on her while she helped him over to the horses, still limping herself from her sore hip. “A fine pair we make, don’t we?”

  “I guess now I’m the one who…will hold things up.”

  “Hey! Please…help me!” the wounded man begged. He still lay nearby, curled up in agony. “Kill me! I cannot stand…the pain!”

  Callie stopped walking.

  “Keep going,” Chris told her.

  “But…shouldn’t we do something? I mean, I’m the one who shot him. I don’t really feel sorry for it, but still…”

  Chris glanced over at the man, who continued to beg that they shoot him. “After what he threatened…to do to you? Let him die slowly.” Chris sneered. “We’ve got to get…away from all these bodies. A couple of others might still be alive…but they’re not worth saving. They sure as hell…wouldn’t have shown us any mercy.”

  Torn by her conscience, Callie helped Chris over to Breeze. He managed to get a foot in the stirrup, and Callie gave him a push on his rump to help him mount up. Chris cried out with pain, managing to get into the saddle, and when Callie stepped back, she realized she had blood on her hands. He was bleeding so badly that the blood had run down into the back of his pants and soaked the denim cloth. “Lordy!” she lamented, wiping her hands on her own pants. “You need help bad, Chris!”

  “I know. Let’s go put poor Betsy out of her misery…find a place to…make camp.”

  “Okay. Can you ride?”

  “Got no choice.”

  His voice was getting weaker. Callie hurriedly replaced his rifles, then limped over to Sundance. Grimacing with pain, she managed to climb up onto the horse’s back, straddling over the supplies tied there. She picked up the reins to the extra pack-horse and guided both horses out from behind the rocks, Chris following her. They rode out to where poor Betsy lay, now very still.

  “Please let her already be dead,” Callie prayed. “I don’t want to have to shoot her.” She thought how strange it was that she was worried about putting a horse out of its misery but didn’t care much about the misery the man behind the rocks was suffering.

  She slowly slid down from Sundance, then knelt down to check Betsy. “She’s already dead.”

  Chris just nodded. “I…thought so. Grab whatever supplies you can from her…the mules too.”

  Callie felt ill from her own pain, but she knew certain things simply had to be done, and quickly. She hurriedly unstrapped the saddle on Betsy, grunting and grimacing as she jerked and yanked at the strap that was caught under the horse’s belly, finally managing to get the saddle off the horse’s back. Using all her strength, she hoisted the saddle on top of the gear already strapped to Night Wind, then grabbed her blanket, bedroll, canteen, and other supplies from Betsy, quickly tying everything onto Sundance. “These poor horses are really loaded up,” she told Chris. “And they need water bad.”

  “Got to keep going…maybe an hour south,” he told her. “There’s a stream there…ranch not much farther. Get me…to the stream. Take care of…this wound. Come morning…we have to get to the ranch…for help.”

  Callie ran back to the mules, leading Sundance and Night Wind. As fast as she could work, she untied supplies and loaded even more weight onto the two horses, hating to burden them so. She had no choice. Out here their supplies were vital.

  She walked back to where Chris waited. “I’ll climb up with you,” she told him. “These other two horses are loaded up awful heavy. Besides, you look like you need something to hang on to.”

  Chris made no objection.

  Grimacing with her own pain, Callie managed to get up on Breeze and scooted back into the saddle. “Hang on,” she told Chris, taking hold of the reins.

  Chris moved his arms around her, saying nothing. He dropped his head against her shoulder, and feeling the weight of him, Callie knew he was close to passing out completely. “Lordy!” she whispered, taking up the reins to the extra two horses. She had to find that stream before nightfall…and before Chris Mercy fell off his horse, in which case she sure as hell wouldn’t be able to lift him back onto it.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  A full moon was the only thing left to guide her by the time Callie came upon the stream Chris had told her about. By then she could feel Chris’s full weight against her, and his hold on her felt limp. She wasn’t sure what the heck to do for him once she made camp. Her own hip ached fiercely, and she could tell the area around the bite was swollen. She was in no condition to help someone else, but she had no choice now. Chris was in worse shape than she was.

  She didn’t have to urge the horses to the water. They hastened their pace on their own until they reached the stream’s edge, where they drank eagerly. She moved Chris’s arms from around her and managed to slide off the horse. Chris slumped forward, hanging on to Breeze’s neck. Borrowing what strength she had left, Callie hurriedly unloaded the packhorses. She spread out a blanket for Chris and carried her saddle over to it for a headrest, grateful for the bright moonlight. To her relief, there was grass along the stream, so she could hobble the horses there and they would have plenty of grass and water for however long it took to get Chris back to riding condition. It also made a decent place for Chris to be able to lie down in comfort.

  She walked over to where Breeze stood grazing, hobbling him too, then touched Chris’s arm. He’d been so still the last hour or so that she feared the worst, but his skin was still warm. “Chris? Can you hear me? You’ve got to get down so I can help you.”

  His only reply was a groan.

  “Come on, Chris. I can’t handle you alone. You’ve got to try to get over to the blanket.” His hat hung down from his neck, and she moved his head so she could get it off. She tossed it aside and pushed some of his thick hair off his face. “Chris?”

  He made no reply.

  “Shoot!” Callie took the canteen from Breeze and uncorked it. She reached up and poured what was left in it over Chris’s face, then threw the canteen aside when he gasped and raised his head. “Chris?”

  “Val?” he answered.

  Val? Who was Val? “Yes, it’s me,” Callie answered, deciding any response was better than none. “Try to get down, Chris. I’ve got to get you over to the blanket.”

  “Yeah,” he said weakly. Slowly he moved his right leg over the saddle, but just as Callie feared he would, he fell right off the horse. She tried to grab him, but his weight made it impossible, and she cried out with pain from straining to hold on to him at least a little so he didn’t hit the ground full force. “Lordy!” she fretted. “I guess this is where you’ll have to stay, Chris Mercy.”

  Yelping an ow! with practically every step, Callie pulled up the stake to which Breeze was hobbled and moved the horse farther away, doing the same with Night Wind, who was also a little too close. At least Chris had landed in grass, she thought. She limped over to where she’d fixed his bedroll and brought the blanket over to where he’d landed, opening it beside him. Using all the strength she could muster, she managed to roll him over onto the blanket. Then she used some wood they’d collected since leaving Hole-in-the-Wall and built a fire next to him so she could see better.

  He was lying on his stomach now, and she decided to leave him that way so she could do something about the wound in his back. She untied her own blanket from her gear and rolled it up, putting it under his head, then dug some gauze out of their supplies. Remembering that her mother used to douse cuts with whiskey, she figured that was all she could do for Chris’s wound. She had no idea if the bullet was still in him, but if it was, and it hadn’t killed him yet, she could only pray it wouldn’t. By now the bleeding must have finally stopped or slowed greatly. Otherwise he surely would be dead from loss of blood. Maybe all he needed was to lie still for several hours, get some rest. Then, if they could reach the ranch for which they were headed, maybe somebody there knew how to take out bullets.


  She told herself to stay calm now and use common sense. She had to get that wound cleaned up. She brought over a canteen and a towel, then went over to Breeze and dug through Chris’s saddlebags, where she knew he kept a flask of whiskey. She’d caught him sipping on it a time or two, and at first that had worried her, but she had yet to see him drink much or get drunk from what he did drink, and it dawned on her she really was learning to trust him.

  Actually, she was learning more than that. Much as she was determined never to care about a man, she cared about Christian Mercy. She more than cared, and that was probably the dumbest thing she could allow to happen.

  She walked over and filled the canteen with fresh stream water, making sure to stay upstream from the horses. She came back to where Chris lay, and grimacing with pain, she knelt down beside him. Cautiously she folded up his leather vest, then pulled his red checkered shirt out from his pants, having trouble at first because of all the blood that had dried and stuck to his skin as well as making his pants stick to the shirt. She carefully peeled the shirt up and away from the wound, and by the light of the fire she could see the ugly hole at his lower left side, still oozing blood, but very slowly now.

  She breathed deeply with relief, then wet the towel and began washing around the wound as best she could. Chris made no sound or movement. She uncorked the whiskey bottle then and poured some of the demon drink, as her mother always called it, into the wound.

  She jumped back when Chris let out a cry of agony and started to get up. Quickly Callie capped the whiskey and tossed the bottle aside, leaning over him and pushing on his shoulder. “No, Chris! Don’t get up! Don’t get up!”

  He withered back down.

  “Oh, lordy, I hope I’m doing this right,” Callie lamented. She grabbed up the gauze and held the end near the wound, then wrapped it over his back. Then she straddled him and forced her left hand under his belly, not an easy task because of his dead weight. She grabbed the roll of gauze and pulled it around under him, back across his back, around under his belly again, repeating the process several times, perspiring from her own pain. She wrapped the wound as firmly as possible before tying it off.

  She plunked down beside him, totally exhausted from the trauma of the day. She drank some of the canteen water, then reached over to lazily add some wood to the fire.

  Chris groaned. Callie leaned closer to hear, and he again moaned the name Val.

  “I’m right here, Chris.”

  “Need…water,” he said in a near whisper, his eyes still closed. “So…thirsty.”

  Callie remembered hearing her father once talk about how a bullet wound and/or loss of blood could make a man crave water something fierce. Fighting a terrible need to lie down and sleep herself, she grunted and pushed until she managed to roll Chris over once more so he would be on his back, then slid the rolled-up blanket under his head. She picked up the canteen and moved one arm under his neck, raising him just enough to trickle some canteen water into his mouth. He coughed and groaned.

  “It’s all right, Chris. You’ll be okay. Try to drink a little more water. You lost a lot of blood. My pa once said a man should drink a lot of water if he bleeds a lot. I always remembered that.”

  He lay panting and groaning, and Callie trickled a little more water into his mouth before he finally quieted again. One other thing she remembered was that a man wounded by a bullet had to be kept warm, something about a shock to the body. Using her last few ounces of energy, she got up and unsaddled Breeze, also removing Chris’s gear from the horse. That took care of all the horses for the night. Now she just had to take care of herself and Chris.

  She took one of Chris’s rifles and grabbed a few more blankets, bringing them over to where he lay. She laid the rifle down beside her, then opened up the two blankets, covering Chris with both of them. Then she crawled in beside him, realizing that an extra body could help provide warmth. She put an arm around him and rested her head against his shoulder, pulling both blankets up around their necks.

  “I’m right here, Chris. Don’t you die on me now,” she said softly in his ear.

  His only answer was another groan.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Callie felt a movement. That and the chirp of a bird woke her, and when she opened her eyes, Chris was lying on his right side, facing her, watching her. There was his face. Right there. So close. What in the world was that she saw in those blue eyes? Admiration? Desire?

  She sat up quickly, moving out from under the blanket. “I was trying to keep you extra warm.”

  He smiled weakly. “I figured that,” he answered, his voice strained. He grimaced as he rolled onto his back. “How in hell did we get here?”

  “You don’t remember?” Callie tucked the blankets around him.

  Chris put a hand to his eyes. “The last thing I remember is following you out to Betsy. That’s about it.” He grunted when he moved his legs. “God, I hurt. And I’m thirsty as hell. Can you bring me some water?”

  “I have some right here.” Callie reached over and grabbed the canteen. “I gave you some last night, but you kind of choked on it.” She uncorked the canteen. “I did everything I could think of. You fell off the horse right here, so I rolled you onto a blanket and I managed to clean the wound a little and pour whiskey on it. I wrapped some gauze around it but probably didn’t do a very good job. It was so dark. I had only the light of the fire to work by.”

  He groaned as he managed to rise up on his right elbow. He took the canteen and gulped down some water. Callie couldn’t help her tears then, the horror of yesterday’s experience and the fear of Chris dying all mixing together with her weariness and her own pain to bring out her weaker side. The next thing she knew, Chris had put down the canteen and grasped her hand.

  “Hey, we’ll be all right, Callie.”

  “I thought sure you’d die…for a while there,” she told him. “And it would have been all my fault!”

  Chris lay his head back down but kept hold of her hand. “Now, why do you think that?”

  “Because I’m the reason…you’re out here,” she said. “And I know you’re a good man, Christian Mercy…in spite of what you do now…and all your pretending to not care about anything.”

  Her squeezed her hand. “Callie.”

  She wiped her eyes, angry with herself for crying like a baby, then met his gaze.

  “I’m out here because I chose to be out here,” he told her. “We all make our choices in life…so we just have to live with the results. No one forced me to do this, okay? If anything more bad happens, it will be my own fault. Nobody else’s. Got that?”

  She nodded, still sniffling. “How do you feel? I mean…besides hurting all over? You sound stronger. Last night you were really in bad shape. You even mumbled somebody else’s name—didn’t know who I was.”

  He closed his eyes. “Whose name?” he asked weakly.

  She wiped her nose with her shirtsleeve. “Val,” she answered cautiously.

  He lay there quietly for a while. “Figures,” he answered softly.

  “Was she…your wife?”

  He sighed deeply. “We’d better check this wound,” he told her, completely changing the subject. “I’ve got to know if the bullet went through…like I think it did, or if it’s still in there. Help me…get my shirt off.”

  His shirt off? She’d never seen a man with his shirt off in her whole life. Even the men who’d attacked her mother hadn’t taken off their shirts. Her father had never let her see him without a shirt; nor had any of the various men who’d worked at the ranch at different times.

  “Help me up,” he said, rising on one elbow again.

  Callie grasped his right arm and helped him get to his knees.

  “Get my shirt…and vest off,” he told her. “Maybe you can clean the wound better…put more whiskey on it. You need to see if there’s an exit wound. The bullet must not have hit anything important, or I’d already be a goner. Probably just a flesh wound.
”

  Callie helped him get off his vest. “You ever been wounded before?”

  “Oh, yes.” He winced. “Took a good one once in my…right thigh…broke the bone. I was…laid up quite a while…with that one.” He took a deep breath. “In this case…I guess I can be glad most vital organs…are on the right side…and this wound is on the left.”

  “Yes, sir,” Callie answered, feeling nervous as she unbuttoned his shirt, embarrassed at seeing chest hairs when the shirt came open.

  “I must have lost a lot of blood,” he said then. “I’m as light-headed as a butterfly full of whiskey.” He shook his head. “Damn!” He grimaced as Callie pulled the shirt off each arm, and he immediately lay down on his right side again. “How does the gauze look? Any more bleeding?”

  Callie looked at his back. “Yes, sir, but not so much.” She couldn’t help noticing how muscled his arms and shoulders were.

  “Cut off the gauze and check the wound. See if you can…find an exit wound,” he told her. “Use my pocket knife…to cut the gauze. Help me to my knees again so you can unwrap it easier.”

  Callie realized she couldn’t let her embarrassment stop her. The man needed help. She got him to his knees, then fished into his pants pocket for the knife, feeling oddly stirred so close to him, his chest bare like that, having to reach into his pocket. She kept her eyes averted as she pulled out the knife. Then she carefully sliced through the gauze and unwrapped it. She noticed his stomach was flat and muscled. “Can you stay on your knees a few more minutes?” she asked.

  “I think so. Do you see an exit wound?”

  “I’m not sure, there’s so much blood. I’ve got to clean it up better.” She dug out a clean washcloth and wet it, then spent the next few minutes washing away more dried blood while Chris used her shoulder to brace himself. “Looks like a hole right here, under your bottom left rib,” she told him then. “Yes, sir, I do believe it is. The bullet went through, thank God.”