“Well, at the rate we’re going, that’s bound to happen sooner rather than later,” she told him. They started for the boardwalk when someone farther back in the alley called out.
“Mitch Brady!”
Mitch turned.
“Today you die!”
Mitch ducked and shoved Emma to the ground. To her dying day she would not know how he moved fast enough to get her to the ground and pull his own six-gun while the man who’d threatened Mitch stood there with his gun already drawn, but somehow Mitch got off a shot just as the intruder fired at him. The intruder cried out and fell, and it took Emma a moment to realize Mitch had also been shot. He just lay there on top of her for a moment, then wilted beside her, blood pouring from his head.
Emma stared in horror, at first unable to find her voice. Mitch! Mitch! He looked dead.
“No!” she finally screamed, ignoring her own scrapes and bruises. She managed to sit up and raise Mitch’s head. She put it in her lap and blood immediately soaked the skirt of her dress as she screamed his name.
In the next moment Randy was there, followed by a growing crowd of onlookers.
“He killed him!” Emma screamed. “He killed Mitch. He killed Mitch!”
“Jesus!” Randy exclaimed. He knelt down beside Mitch. “Holy God, he’s been shot in the head.” He stood up. “Somebody get Len and Benny!” he screamed. “And get Doc Wilson!” He touched Emma’s shoulder. “We’ll get him to the doc,” he told her.
“He’s already dead! He’s already dead!” Emma mourned, rocking back and forth.
Randy ran farther back in the alley and more people moved closer.
“Oh, my God, it’s Mitch!” a woman exclaimed. “It’s Mitch!”
Suddenly Sarah was there. She leaned down and pressed her head against Mitch’s chest.
Randy came walking toward them then, supporting a stumbling man who was bleeding badly from his middle. Emma looked up at him, recognizing he was one of the men who’d ridden with Trudy Wiley the day Trudy threatened Mitch at Alder Gulch.
“Murderer!” she screamed at him. “Murderer!” She picked up Mitch’s gun where it still lay beside him and made ready to shoot the man a second time, but Len grabbed her arm.
“Give me the gun, Emma! We’ll take care of this!”
“He killed Mitch! He didn’t even give him a chance,” she screamed.
“Somebody get Doc Wilson!” someone yelled.
“Emma, his heart is still beating,” Sarah told Emma.
Len took the gun from Emma’s hand and began prying her away from Mitch.
“No!”
“Emma, we have to get him over to Doc’s place. If you want Mitch to live, it’s important to move fast. Come on now, move back.”
Emma watched as men hurriedly picked up Mitch’s body and made off with it. It took four men to carry him. She watched in stunned confusion. Randy walked past them, half dragging the man who’d shot Mitch. He was begging for water and for a doctor.
“It’s Pete Bailey!” someone yelled.
“String him up!” another yelled. “The sonofabitch killed Mitch Brady!”
“Hang him!” shouted another.
“Back off!” Len told them, waving a gun. “Bailey will get treated and get a trial.” He moved away from Emma and kicked Bailey in the back, sending him sprawling. “Then we’ll hang him!” Len added.
The crowd erupted in cheers and angry shouts. They herded Bailey toward the jail while the man screamed for water and for help. Emma stared after him, Sarah standing beside her. She looked at Sarah, bewildered. “I…Mitch and I…we were going to buy some material. I was going to…bring it to you…for curtains.”
“Emma, you’re in shock. Come on. Let’s get over to Doc’s place. Mitch needs you.”
“I bet Trudy Wiley paid Bailey to kill Mitch!” someone shouted in the distance.
“Bailey shot him in the head!” someone else yelled. “Nobody can survive that.”
Some woman screamed Mitch’s name. Probably one of his favorite prostitutes, Emma thought absently, still unable to absorb what had just happened.
Sarah put an arm around her then. “Come with me, honey.”
“Oh, my God, Sarah, what will I do without Mitch? What will I do without Mitch?” Emma felt dizzy and lost in some kind of vacuum of horror.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Sarah answered, urging Emma toward Doc’s office. “Wait and see what Doc Wilson says.”
In moments they were surrounded by a bevy of prostitutes, and behind them half the town’s occupants, who all followed Emma and Sarah to Doc’s office. Emma could hear some of the women crying.
“Poor Mitch! Why did God let this happen?”
Why indeed? Emma thought. All her joy, all the beauty of the past ten days of marriage, was gone, dumped into the black hole of death.
“What will I do, Sarah? I can’t live without Mitch.”
“You won’t have to. He’ll be all right, honey, you’ll see.”
Emma heard the slight break in the woman’s voice, and she knew Sarah was only trying to make her feel better.
“He’s shot in the head, Sarah! No one lives through that!”
“It can depend on a lot of things, Emma. And Mitch Brady is tough as nails. He’ll get over this, and God help Pete Bailey and anyone else who had anything to do with this, once Mitch is better. If Pete Bailey lives, you can bet Len and the others will beat the truth of why he did this out of him, and they will by God save Pete’s hanging for when Mitch is better and he can watch.”
“I knew it! I knew something would happen to him. I saw the look in Trudy Wiley’s eyes, Sarah. I knew she’d kill him or hire someone to do it. I wanted him to stop what he was doing. I wanted him to quit vigilante work and raise horses and cattle—anything—anything besides risking his life like he does.”
“I expect when he gets well he’ll give a lot of thought to that, honey, but what he does is in his blood and it will be hard to give it up. I’m betting he’ll do it for you, though. He’d do anything for you.”
Emma hesitated at the door to Doc Wilson’s place. She took a deep breath. “Sarah, what if he’s dead? The last thing he did was kiss me and tell me he…couldn’t wait for me to be fat with his baby.”
“Emma, you have to think positive. I’ve known men who were shot in the head and lived.”
“Don’t lie to me, Sarah.”
Sarah sighed deeply, and Hildy moved up to stand on the other side of Emma. “Honey, Mitch is such a strong man, and he loves you so much. He’ll live for you. I just know he will.”
Emma’s legs felt like rubber and her whole midsection—stomach, lungs, heart—hurt with dread and tension as she clung to Sarah and managed to walk inside. She thought about how violently and suddenly her own mother had died, how alone and terrified she’d been ever since then…until Mitch Brady came along. He was her lover, her protector, her friend. He’d promised her she never had to fear that anyone would ever hurt her again. If only she could have promised the same thing in return. Now there he lay, motionless, blood covering his head and face. She stumbled to his side, melting down beside the cot, realizing only then that her own dress was wet with her husband’s blood.
Twenty-eight
“Doc!” Emma whimpered. “Please tell me he’s not dead.”
Doc Wilson sighed. “He’s not dead, and it’s good you’re here. Just hold his hand. He might sense your presence, and that’s important.”
Doc leaned over to try washing away the blood, then glanced at Sarah. “I’m glad you’re here, Sarah. Keep some water hot at all times, will you?”
“Sure, Doc.”
“Benny, make sure nobody out there in that crowd tries to come in. See if you can quiet things down out there some.”
Benny walked out and Emma grasped Mitch’s hand, w
hich was usually strong and firm and comforting but now simply hung limp. She kissed the back of it before pressing it to her face.
“Mitch? Mitch, hang on. You have to hang on. I can’t go on without you, Mitch Brady.”
She broke into sobs, clinging to his hand.
“Make her some tea, Sarah,” Doc told the woman. “I have something I can put in it to calm Emma down.”
“Don’t put me to sleep, Doc,” Emma told him. “I have to be here for Mitch…talk to him. I don’t want to sleep. What if he dies while I’m asleep?”
“I won’t put you to sleep. I just want you to relax. Mitch will need you the next few days. You don’t want to wear yourself down to where you get sick.”
“The next few days? Does that mean you think he’ll live?”
“I’m afraid it’s hard to say, Emma. You never know with a head injury. These things can turn out fine, or he could end up paralyzed or a vegetable or…worse.”
Mitch groaned, moving his head slightly.
“Mitch?” Emma squeezed his hand. “Mitch, it’s me—Emma. Please wake up, Mitch! Please hang on.”
Doc leaned closer, checking Mitch’s pupils. “Sometimes a person can seem unconscious but they can hear and understand everything people are saying,” he told Emma. He looked over then at one of the miners who’d helped carry Mitch inside. He stood aside waiting for some kind of orders, unsure what to do next. “Get Emma a chair, will you?”
“Yes, sir.” The man hurriedly brought a wooden chair over next to the cot. “Sit down in this, ma’am. You shouldn’t be on the floor there,” the miner told Emma. He took Emma’s arm and helped her up. “I’m right sorry about this, ma’am.”
Emma never let go of Mitch’s hand as she sat down into the chair. Doc Wilson managed to wash away most of the blood. “Looks like more of a crease,” he told Emma. “It’s deep, though. Real deep.”
“Don’t let him die, Doc. Please don’t let him die.”
Doc studied the wound. “This kind of injury can affect the brain in a hundred different ways. He could have a concussion, or maybe a cracked skull—it’s hard to say. It knocked him out the same as if somebody had clobbered him with a hammer. Blows like that can do a lot of things to the brain. I just can’t tell till he wakes up…if he wakes up.”
Emma drew in her breath. “You mean…he might always be like this?”
The doctor bent closer and opened Mitch’s shirt, listening to Mitch’s heart with a stethoscope. After a few seconds he straightened. “It’s like I said, Emma,” he answered sadly. “I don’t like to make promises or predictions. I’d rather give you the worst scenario than to promise something that might never be. His heart is strong and he’s plenty healthy, so he could recover. It’s a good sign that he moaned a minute ago, a sign he’s struggling to regain consciousness, but he could come and go like that for days, maybe even weeks.”
“We were going to buy material for Sarah to make us some curtains,” she said softly, never taking her eyes off of Mitch. “And out of nowhere Pete stepped from the shadows in an alley and said, ‘Mitch Brady—today you die.’ Everything happened so fast then. Mitch drew his gun and pushed me down at the same time. They both seemed to fire at once, and Pete Bailey went down first. Then Mitch just laid there a minute. I didn’t even know he’d been hit till he rolled away from me. Bailey just shot Mitch…like an execution.”
“That sonofabitch,” Sarah grumbled, filling a tea strainer with tea leaves. “I hope he dies a horrible death over there in that jail. Doc, don’t you dare leave Mitch to go help that bastard Bailey.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“I hope he does live, so we can watch him hang,” the miner added.
Emma broke into tears again, putting Mitch’s hand to her cheek. “Mitch, I’m here. I’m here. Please wake up. Please!”
It was too much. Her mother’s death, Alan Radcliffe’s attack and his threats to have her sent to prison, her flight into a land totally foreign to her, the attack on the stagecoach and ensuing violence, being stuck in a wild, unruly town full of threatening strangers, a whirlwind romance with a wild, sometimes violent man who’d won her heart in three short weeks. Everything closed in on her, and she broke into deep sobs.
Sarah brought her some tea, touching her shoulder. “Here, honey, drink this. And maybe you should let Doc give you something to help you sleep.”
“No! I have to be here for Mitch, in case he wakes up.” She reluctantly let go of Mitch’s hand and took a handkerchief from a skirt pocket to blow her nose and wipe her eyes. She took the tea from Sarah. “Thank you.” She sipped the hot brew, taking strength from the strong beverage and the warmth of the steam. She looked at Doc Wilson. “There is nothing to do now but wait, right?”
Doc nodded. “I’ll shave the hair around the crease and clean it out the best I can, then stitch it up. After that, yes, there is nothing more I can do. He’ll either wake up and be fine, or maybe wake up and have amnesia or be otherwise mentally affected, or he won’t wake up at all. We have to pray for the first outcome.”
Emma rose. “Then when you’re finished with him, I want him taken over to our place. I’ll take care of him myself.”
“Emma, I don’t know if you’re strong enough,” Doc objected.
“I am far stronger than you think.” She looked at Sarah. “You can help on occasion, can’t you?”
Sarah smiled softly. “You know I will. And so will the other girls. We’ll all take turns.”
Emma turned back to Doc. “You’re a busy man, Doc, and you might need the room here. And sometimes you’re out riding circuit for days at a time. You said yourself there is nothing more you can do, so like I said, I’ll take care of him. Just tell me what to do, what to watch for, how to get some nourishment into him.”
Doc ordered Sarah to bring a bowl of water over, told her where he kept a razor, then turned back to Emma. “All right, Emma, I’ll have some men take him to your place soon as I’m done here. I have to be blunt with you, though, it might not be as easy as you think. He could have fits of vomiting. Head injuries can sometimes cause that. You’ll have to make a special point of watching for that, because if he’s lying on his back and unconscious, he’ll choke to death on his own vomit. I hate to talk about the raw parts of this, but you need to know. And you’ll have to stuff some towels under him. His bodily functions will keep working, which means he’ll urinate but can’t be moved. You’ll just have to keep cleaning him up.”
Emma raised her chin. “I am not the wilting flower you might think I am,” she answered. “I’ll do whatever it takes. I love Mitch more than anything on this earth, and I took a vow to stand by him for better or worse, in sickness and in health, and I intend to do just that.”
Doc Wilson nodded. “All right—but you promise me you’ll let others help out and get some decent sleep. It takes strength to care for somebody in this shape, and that means eating and sleeping. Lord knows Sarah and Ma Kelly and sometimes Randy and Len and Benny can help, and most of the whores in Alder will gladly help you out, too. Promise me you’ll let them help.”
Emma closed her eyes. “I promise.” She sat back down, grasping Mitch’s hand again while Sarah helped Doc Wilson shave the area around the ugly crease in his scalp. Doc poured whiskey into the wound and Mitch groaned again.
“Good. He’s feeling some pain,” Doc commented. “That means something somewhere is working.” More groans tore at Emma’s insides as Doc sewed up the open wound with a large needle and catgut. Outside, a commotion arose.
“Go see what’s going on, Cletus,” Doc told the miner. “And make sure no one comes in here, except maybe Randy.”
“Sure, Doc.” Cletus went outside, then returned after a few minutes, looking a bit nervous.
“What is it?” Sarah asked him.
Cletus glanced at Emma. “He died, ma’am. Pete Bailey. He’s dea
d. They’re, uh, they’re dragging his body out to the graveyard clear up the hill past town—gonna bury him right now with no ceremony.”
Emma closed her eyes and rested her forehead against Mitch’s hand. “So much violence.”
“Emma, this is Alder, Montana,” Sarah reminded her, “and you married a lawman. Out here it’s survival that matters. Mitch knows that. That’s why he does what he does, but I know he never wanted any of the violence to visit you like this.”
“None of it will matter if Mitch dies.” She kissed his hand and watched as Doc Wilson finished sewing up the wound. Mitch’s forehead was turning purple. She couldn’t imagine how he would survive this, or how she would herself survive if Mitch Brady died.
Twenty-nine
For eight days, Emma sat by Mitch’s side, terrified he would die or simply never wake up. She bathed him, shaved him, and forced food and water down his throat to keep him alive. Mostly she gave him only broth. He instinctively swallowed but gave no sign that he was aware of being fed or touched in any way. He didn’t speak, didn’t open his eyes, barely moved. The few times he did shift slightly, Emma rejoiced that he was moving at all. That meant he wasn’t paralyzed. She talked to him constantly, deciding to have pretend conversations just to keep her own sanity and in hopes that one day he would open his eyes and answer her, or at least indicate that he heard what she was saying and understood.
People brought food, so much that Emma had to send it back with others. She had little appetite of her own and was almost too tired to eat anyway. Sarah set up volunteers who came to relieve her for three hours out of every eight so that Emma could sleep, and when she slept it was right beside Mitch, hoping he would sense she was there. Most of the time there was someone else there, too, not wanting Emma to be alone even when it was her turn to do the caring. Doc Wilson visited as often as possible, but always with the same prognosis, which was that he had no idea if or when Mitch would wake up, or what condition he would be in when he did.
Len, Benny, and Randy took turns sitting with Mitch, and the traveling preacher came and prayed over him whenever he was in town. Judge Brody visited, as well as Sparky Thomas, the feed-store owner, and his wife, Dora. Vigilantes Emma had never even met paid their respects. Some of them paid a visit to Trudy Wiley, telling her that if she ever stepped foot in Alder, they couldn’t guarantee a crowd of angry men wouldn’t hang her, woman or not. Some of them wanted to hang her, but Judge Brody warned there was no hard evidence that the woman had actually hired Pete Bailey to kill Mitch, and because she was a woman, hanging her could worsen their violent reputation. Trudy finally sold all her stock and left for parts unknown, which was fine with the vigilantes and everyone in Alder.
Desperate Hearts Page 22
