This Gun for Hire

by Jo Goodman

  The sunlight on the snow was blinding. Calico had to squint and raise one gloved hand to shield her eyes from the glare. Farther ahead she could see the mountain stream that Ramsey had mentioned. He was not exaggerating about the spring spilling diamonds over the rocks. Every water droplet glistened.

  She glanced behind her and saw Ramsey was closing the gap between them. She grasped for something else to say that would make these moments so awkward for him that he could not possibly unburden himself of a marriage proposal.

  “The view is breathtaking,” she said, nudging Daisy forward again. Ramsey drew alongside her anyway, and she silently cursed the indolent Lazy Daisy. She kept her hand up to her brow and wished the silly little velvet hat she was forced to wear had the brim of her Stetson. “It is too bad that Ann doesn’t ride. I think she would like to see—”

  It was almost too late by the time Calico saw the long, dark shadow against a milk white crest of snow to register what it was and act on it. She made a grab for the rifle in Ramsey’s scabbard and missed because her sudden movement made Bandit crow hop. The gelding threw his unprepared rider off. Calico leaned as far sideways as she could and still stay in her saddle. She caught Bandit’s reins, yanked hard, and kept him from trampling Ramsey.

  She did not immediately feel the bullet that creased her arm just below the shoulder. It was still extended for balance when she heard the long-barreled rifle’s report. That’s when she understood what the burning sensation was. She threw herself from the saddle, not the least worried that Daisy would do anything but step over her.

  “We’ve got to get back to the trees,” she shouted at Ramsey. “Are you all right? Can you walk?”

  Except to nod, he didn’t move.

  “You’ve got to get to your feet, take Daisy by the reins—she won’t bolt—and use her for cover to get to the trees.” Another bullet dug into the ground between them. They were sprayed by snow and bits of frozen dirt. “Now, Mr. Stonechurch! Now!”

  “You’re bleeding! You’re hurt!”

  “Go!” Calico scrambled to her knees, cursing her skirt when it impeded her progress, and grabbed Daisy’s reins. She tugged sideways and brought the mare around and then shoved the reins at Ramsey. “I will kill you myself if you don’t go now,” she said, gritting her teeth.

  He took the reins in his fist, stumbled to his feet as another bullet slammed the ground near Calico’s left shoulder. He hesitated. She had not flinched, and for a moment he thought the bullet had struck her, but then he saw her unbuttoning her coat to make her gun accessible. He did not know if she meant to make good on her threat, but he did not stay to find out.

  Calico clicked her tongue against her teeth loud enough to get Bandit’s attention. He was skittish, afraid, but for reasons she would never understand, he responded to her call. “Here, boy. That’s a good fellow.” He put his nose down near her head, snuffling, and for a few precious moments blocked her from direct fire. “Sweet, smart Bandit. He didn’t know how to take charge of you, did he?” She patted his nose. He shook his head and the reins dropped within her reach. “That’s it. Stay still, sweet lad. Yes, you are so very bright.” She jumped to her feet, grabbed Bandit’s bridle to steady him and herself, and when they were both ready, she seized the pommel in her fist and pulled herself into the saddle. She never sat up. Lying low, she whipped the reins, and held on as Bandit charged the trees.

  By the time they reached the house, they had rehearsed what they would say. They had arrived at the explanation stage only after considerable wrangling. There was no talking Ramsey out of taking responsibility for shooting her. He remained adamant that neither Ann nor Beatrice should be party to the truth. Ann would never leave, and Beatrice would be a tangled skein of nerves. Calico gave in because she did not have a better idea. It was hardly plausible that she had shot herself in the same arm she used to handle a gun. Still, it rankled that Ramsey would make himself look foolish on her behalf. She had no expectation that the story would not become fodder for the town, and for a while at least, he would be the object of snickering, perhaps even sneering, and that did not set well with her because it was undeserved.

  At Calico’s insistence, they dismounted some fifty yards from the house and tethered their mounts in the trees. Quill could come out later, she told Ramsey, and retrieve her scabbard and rifle before the animals were returned to the livery, but she did not want to risk either Ann or Beatrice seeing a weapon that they knew he did not own. The presence of the Colt could be explained away, but her Winchester rifle was something else again.

  “Are you able to walk?” asked Ramsey, looking her over.

  “It’s my arm, not my legs. And it’s only a flesh wound.” She handed him her revolver. “Take this. You should be holding it when we get there.”

  He accepted the gun, but he continued to regard her injury doubtfully. “You say it’s a flesh wound, but you won’t let me see it. Your coat sleeve is soaked with blood. I don’t think you know how bad it is.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s not getting better while we stand here jawing about it. If it will help you move on, you can take my arm. My good arm.”

  Ramsey stepped up to her left side and slipped his arm through hers. “There’s one more thing,” he said as they began walking. “About what I was saying before I was shot at, or more accurately, what you were saying . . . I think it would be better if . . .” His voice trailed off. He shook his head and did not resume speaking.

  “I won’t say a word, Mr. Stonechurch. Forget anything I said to the contrary. I can keep a secret, even about this.”

  His cheeks puffed as he exhaled. “It’s just that what I started to say . . . well, I don’t think you . . .”

  “I won’t say a word,” she told him again. “Let’s leave it at that.”

  Chapter Ten

  Beatrice Stonechurch backed into Calico’s room carrying a tray of tea and sand tarts. She turned, revealing her treasure, and immediately realized she had arrived with too little refreshment.

  “Oh, well, this won’t do,” she said, her eyes darting from Calico to Quill and back again. “I did not know that Mr. McKenna was here. I would have brought another cup.”

  Calico beckoned her to come closer to the bed. “Mr. McKenna just arrived, but he has already informed me that he does not intend to stay long. Isn’t that right, Mr. McKenna?”

  Quill did not answer. Instead, he stood and relieved Beatrice of the tea tray. He set it on the bedside table. In addition to the delicately painted china pot and creamer, there was only one cup and saucer and three dainty cookies. “You weren’t going to have tea, Mrs. Stonechurch?” he asked.

  “No. Conversation perhaps, but not tea. That’s a special blend of white willow bark and meadowsweet. I added a touch of licorice to give it more fragrance and flavor. I find that helps. It’s for her fever, you understand, and the discomfort she still has with her arm.” Expecting a protest from Calico, Beatrice gave her a stern look and waggled a finger at her for good measure.

  “Do not deny it. I see for myself how you favor your arm.” She moved like a sprite, smoothly inserting herself between Calico in the bed and Quill standing right beside it. He had to give way to her or have his toes trampled. She put the back of one hand to Calico’s forehead. “As I thought, dear. You are fevered.”

  “Your fingers are cold, Beatrice.”

  “That’s because you are so warm,” Beatrice went on, shaking her head. “I don’t like it. That Ramsey could be so careless, it still rankles, and I have not kept how I feel about it from him. This idea of learning to shoot makes no sense to me. This is a peaceful mining town, not Deadwood or Tombstone. Ramsey and Leonard did not stand for the kind of wild nonsense that went on in Leadville in its heyday. Even Constable Hobbes does not wear a gun. He has always maintained that his stick is enough to keep the peace.”

  Beatrice turned suddenly. She was too s
hort to look Quill squarely in the eye, but by sharply lifting her chin, she gave him an eyeful anyway. “I blame you, too, Mr. McKenna. Ramsey told me you persuaded him that there was no harm in allowing my niece and Miss Nash to learn to shoot, and we all see what’s come of that, don’t we?”

  “I blame myself,” Quill said, contrite.

  Beatrice humphed lightly. His penitent mien took some of the wind from her sails. She turned back to Calico. “I cannot apologize for feeling so strongly about this. Ann knows how I feel, too.”

  Calico said, “You have not mentioned me. I share in the blame. I could have refused Mr. Stonechurch’s invitation to ride his property. Certainly I should have not seized on the opportunity to take Mr. McKenna’s gun and asked for a lesson.”

  “I am not convinced the lesson was your idea, although I understand that you might want to protect Ramsey. It would be like him to try to impress you. Ann told me that you were not comfortable with the gun at the first lesson, so it seems unlikely that you would have been eager for another.”

  Calico pressed three fingers to her temple and gently massaged it. “I understand how you arrived at that conclusion, but you would be incorrect. I did ask for the lesson.”

  Beatrice gave in gracefully. “If you say so. I am going to pour you some tea and stay long enough to see you drink it, and then I promise I will be gone and you and Mr. McKenna may talk.” She gave Quill an over-the-shoulder glance. “As long as you do not overstay your welcome.”

  Quill crossed his heart.

  Calico accepted the cup of tea and held it in both hands as she lifted it to her lips. At the first taste, she wrinkled her nose.

  “Too much sugar?” asked Beatrice.

  “No. I think it must be the licorice. I’m sorry, but I don’t care for it.”

  “I will leave it out next time. Go on, drink up. I promise it is better for you than anything Dr. Pitman will want to give you. The man trusts his laudanum, but it has no healing powers.”

  “Mm,” Calico murmured. With Beatrice watching, she tipped her head and drained the cup.

  “I’ll leave the cookies,” Beatrice said. She set them aside and presented the tray to Calico for her to return the cup. “I will come back later to check on you. Mr. McKenna, I will see you at dinner.”

  Quill nodded and escorted her to the door and opened it for her. He watched her go, closing the door when she reached the stairs. Even then he did not move away until he was certain she was not returning.

  When he stood at Calico’s bedside again, he leaned forward and put his hand against her forehead as Beatrice had done. “I think Beatrice is right. You have a fever.”

  Calico knocked his hand aside and set her own hand against her brow. She shook her head. “Stop hovering. I think you both are making too much of it. I would not call this a fever.”

  Quill shrugged and sat in the rocker that had been moved into her room to accommodate company. He scooted closer to the bed and set his heels on the bed frame. “Maybe I’ll send for Dr. Pitman regardless of what Beatrice decides.”

  “Don’t. I mean it. Too much fuss has already been made. I can barely tolerate my own company let alone the parade that comes in and out of here.”

  That arrested his attention. He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Do you want me to leave?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. I am just in a mood. This is not a wound that should be keeping me bedridden. I do not understand it. I had less discomfort after Dr. Pitman stitched it up than I have now.”

  “That might have been the laudanum. He gave you a good first dose. You slept for the better part of what was left of the day.”

  She ignored him. “It cannot be infected. He took care to clean out the wound. I watched him pick out threads from my blouse and coat sleeves.”

  “I know. I watched you watching him. Most people would not have had the stomach for that.”

  “Well, I know you don’t, or you would have been watching him.”

  Not offended in the least, Quill grinned at her.

  “Truthfully,” she said, “I had a harder time stomaching Beatrice’s tea. I am glad she took it away. I would have had to pour it down the sink.” She chose a cookie, wincing as she reached for it with her injured arm. “It cannot be infected,” she said.

  “That’s the second time you’ve said that. Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

  Calico bit down hard on the cookie. “I change the dressing regularly. I am so well rested that I am tired from it. I drink the teas and use the poultices. If all of that has been in vain, I will shoot myself, and do a better job of it than that sniper in the rocks did.”

  “In fairness, he was aiming at Ramsey.”

  “Which goes to my point of doing a better job.” She put the remainder of the sand tart in her mouth and chewed.

  “Crumb,” said Quill, touching one corner of his mouth. “Other side. That’s it. May I look at your arm?”

  “Don’t you want a cookie?”

  “I know obfuscation when I hear it.”

  “Who said, ‘First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers’?”

  “Shakespeare put the words in the mouth of a villain named Dick the Butcher.”

  “Are you certain he was a villain? It seems as if the idea might have merit.”

  “He suggested it so he and his friends could get away with anything they liked.”

  “Oh. I thought it meant something else.”

  “Hmm. Most people do. Now let me see your arm. Notice that I am not asking.”

  Calico folded the blankets to her lap and untied the belt of her robe. She did not refuse Quill’s assistance when it came to getting her arm out of it. She wore a sleeveless shift to make changing the dressings easier.

  Quill stared at the bandage that wrapped several times around her upper arm. The portion that covered the sutures was stained brown while the rest of the cotton gauze was white. The stain did not look as if it was dried blood, but he could not imagine what else it might be. He asked about it as he began to unwind the gauze.

  “It’s a tincture that I swab over the sutures when I change the dressing. Echinacea, I think, and I’m sure some other herbs. The Indian scouts used things like this for healing. My father trusted them more than the Army doctors, so I stand with Beatrice on this.”

  “Beatrice gave you this? Not Dr. Pitman?”

  Calico nodded. “She is right about him. He would give me laudanum and maybe some snake oil with enough alcohol in it to arouse the interest of a temperance league, but he has nothing as helpful in his black bag as Beatrice has in her jars.”

  Quill remained doubtful, and the feeling only increased when he got a look at her wound. He shook his head. The bullet had done more than merely crease her flesh, although that was how she liked to describe it. Before the sutures, the gash was just better than a half-inch wide. It was four inches long. To call it a flesh wound hardly seemed accurate. Calico simply did not have that much flesh. The bullet could just have as easily shattered her bone.

  The sutures were taut because the flesh they were trying to hold together was swollen under them. The tincture that discolored the bandage was a transparent brown wash across the wound. Beneath it, her skin was purpling.

  “Calico? Did it look like this the last time you changed the dressing?”

  She had not yet looked at it, had been watching him instead, and had seen the truth she had not been able to admit. She cast her eyes down. The initial injury had been easier to look at than what she was seeing now.

  “No,” she said on a thread of sound. She closed her eyes and set her head back against the headboard. “God, no.”

  “But you had an idea something was wrong.”

  “I might have.”

  “Uh-huh.” The rocker scraped the floor as he pushed it out of the way. “I’m going to wash that up, d
ress it myself, and then I am sending someone for Dr. Pitman. Do you have more bandages?”

  “In the washstand.”

  He stalked off to the bathing room, but not before throwing the discolored, tainted bandage in the fire. “I am looking after you from now on. Beatrice knows what she knows, and that does not include anything about treating gunshot wounds.”

  Calico did not argue. In truth, she was weary of Beatrice’s flitting and fluttering. Beatrice was not anything if not a woman of good intention.

  She opened her eyes when she felt Quill beside her. He had a basin of water that he set on the small, square table, crushing the sand tarts. She did not think he even noticed.

  “Can you turn a little this way?”

  She did. She also sucked in a breath between her teeth when he applied a warm, wet compress to the wound. He held it there for one long minute before he began to gently bathe the injury.

  “Listen to me, Calico. I need to remove the stitches. I’m softening the threads so I can clean in the seam. There’s going to be blood . . . and worse. If you don’t want me to do it, I will send for Dr. Pitman now, but this needs to be tended soon. Tell me what you want. It’s your choice.”

  “After you clean it, can you stitch it again?”

  “Yes. There are no needles here like the ones the doctor used, but I can do it. I know where Beatrice keeps her sewing box. I only have to get it.”

  “Then do it. I want you to do it.” He nodded, warmed the compress in the basin again, and placed it over the sutures. “Hold that there. I won’t be long.” He turned to go, but she stopped him.

  “Bring your flask.”

  “I can do better than that.”

  To keep herself distracted from thinking about what Quill was going to do, she counted off the seconds until he returned. She stopped at 578. She couldn’t be sure that she had not repeated herself a time or two, so she decided that ten minutes was about right.