by Loree Lough
Mark immediately fell to his knees and began drizzling water over Matt’s forehead and cheeks. “Hey, there, big brother,” he said, his voice quaking slightly, “you’d better wake up and start thinkin’ up some good excuses, ‘cause when Bess sees that nasty rip in your britches, she’s gonna give you the worst tongue lashin’ of your life….”
The men walked several hundred yards due east in search of strong, young saplings. It took several whacks of Luke’s hunting knife to cut the small trees down, but soon, they were with the boys again.
After placing all their blankets one atop the other, Chance tethered them to the now-branchless trees with strips of cotton torn from his shirttails and cuffs.
Richie’s contribution were two, long, leather bootlaces. Chance cut each in half, and used the four strings to bind the litter to his saddle girth. Once he’d tested it for strength and durability, Chance gently eased Matt’s unconscious body onto the litter. Even out cold, the boy moaned with pain.
“In his condition, it’ll take us a day just to get him back to the house,” Chance said to the group. To Mark, he added, “Ride on ahead and fetch the doc. See that he’s waiting when we get there, y’hear?”
Mark climbed onto his horse and gathered the reins. “Yessir!”
“And mind that you avoid those confounded mole holes. We’ve only got one litter, after all!”
“Yessir!” the boy said again as he rode off.
The men mounted their horses, too. “We were on our way to Morris Meadows,” Richie said. “Heard-tell that Isaac Junior had a wagon for sale. Luke, here, wants to buy it for his girl. She’s gettin’ hitched next week.” Richie elbowed his friend. “He’s gonna deck it out in baubles an’ bows for the weddin’, ain’t ya Luke?”
The bigger man nodded. “Thought we’d take us a shortcut across Foggy Bottom. Sure would save us a heap o’ travelin’ time….”
Chance patted his horse’s withers to keep the agitated animal calm and still. “I’m foreman here,” he informed them. “Anybody gives you any sass, you just tell ‘em I gave you the go-ahead to cut through.”
Each man saluted with a fingertip to the brim of his hat. “Thanks, man,” Richie said.
“Hope the boy’ll be all right,” Luke said over his shoulder as they trotted off.
“So do I,” Chance said to himself. “So do I.”
***
Every few minutes, Chance looked back to check Matt’s condition. When the boy finally woke up—nearly an hour after he’d fallen from the horse—Chance told him he’d have to work an extra half day to make up for his lazy afternoon nap. Matt, despite being drowsy and in obvious pain, chuckled at Chance’s joke. He apologized repeatedly for causing so much trouble. “Pa is gonna be mighty upset,” he said. “He’s already got so much on his mind….”
Chance couldn’t help but wonder if the pain in Matt’s voice was only due to his injuries, or to the distance Micah had put between himself and his sons. But the boy had lapsed back into unconsciousness before he could offer a word of assurance.
He’d been two years younger than the twins when his own parents died. “Get down to the root cellar where you’ll be safe,” his father had ordered him and his mother on that fateful day. “If I see your faces before I call for you, I’ll tan both your hides but good!”
Immediately, Chance had obeyed.
His mother had not. He’d never seen her cower at the sound of that deep, overpowering voice. So many times, he’d asked himself what she knew about his father that he didn’t. What had she learned about the big man he so loved and respected that made her certain she could stoutly refuse to do as he’d instructed without paying a price? Because on that day, if she’d gone with her son to the root cellar as her husband had insisted, she’d have escaped the oncoming flames.
The thick wooden door of the root cellar had blocked out all light, all sound. Chance waited down there for hours in the dim glow of a single candle’s flame, pacing the dirt floor as he’d waited for his father’s signal, as he’d waited for his pa’s permission to exit.
Half a day later, when Chance climbed from the sweet-smelling pit where he’d been surrounded by dusty jars of peaches and beans and tomatoes that lined his mother’s crude-built wooden shelves, much of the smoke had already cleared.
There had been a prairie fire years earlier, and its hungry flames had greedily devoured the chicken coop and the hog pen before his pa got it under control. Remembering the destruction of that blaze, Chance ran for the house, yelling at the top of his lungs.
When no one answered, he’d balled up his fists and fought the urge to cry. Round and round he’d turned, surveying the silent, smoky world that had been his home. In place of the whitewashed barn, a pile of smoldering boards. The tool shed had become a blackened splotch on the earth. Stepping cautiously through the rubble that had been their kitchen, he’d called out for his parents.
Hours later, when his uncle rode in to investigate the ugly curls of dark smoke churning above his brother’s house, he found his nephew at the end of the drive, clutching his father’s gold pocket watch to his chest. Chance had tried to say “‘T’weren’t my fault, Uncle Josh.” Tried to explain that he’d stayed in the root cellar because his pa had told him to. Wanted to say that he’d found his pa, barely breathing, in a smoldering pile of wood that had once been the kitchen, and that he’d dug around back there in the hope of finding his ma, too.
To this day, he wondered…
…if he’d had the courage to disobey his father, as his mother had, would one more pair of hands, fighting Mother Nature’s fiery temper, have made the difference between life and death for his parents? If hadn’t cowered in the root cellar as long as he had, would he have emerged in time to save them?
The boy woke again, forcing Chance to shove the thorny thoughts aside as he groaned right along with Matt each time a bump in the road worried the broken leg or the injured arm…and only the good Lord knew what damage he’d suffered, internally.
It took nearly eight hours to get back to the manor house, and when at long last they arrived, Doc Beck, Bess, Mark, and Micah were there to meet them. “You were smart not to try and splint these,” Doc said after inspecting the boy’s injuries. “That’s a compound fracture he’s got there. Repairing it is going to require surgery.”
Matt took a deep breath. “Surgery? Pa, do I really have to get an operation?”
Mark hovered in the background, wringing his hands, and Micah stood beside him, chewing his lower lip. Only Bess braved the sight of blood and exposed bone to step up close. She knelt beside her little brother, oblivious to the gravel and grit that soiled the pale blue skirt of her dress. “Hush, now, Matthew,” she crooned softly, patting his hand. “We’re going to do whatever Doc says, ‘cause he knows what’s best, you hear?”
His big dark eyes swam with unshed tears of fear. “But Bess,” he whimpered, “I’m scared to get cut….”
“‘Course you’re scared, but there’s no need to be.” She leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss upon his cheek. “Doc’s scalpel won’t do you near as much damage as I will if you don’t lay back and keep quiet,” Bess scolded gently, running her fingers through his dark, perspiration dampened curls.
Her presence, her voice, her touch seemed enough to calm him, and Matt nodded weakly. “Okay, Bess. Whatever you say.”
Doc put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m going to need some help. Think you’re up to it?”
Bess swallowed and took a deep breath, and, standing, raised her chin and faced the doctor. “Just tell me what you need me to do.”
“The dining room table will do nicely as an operating table,” he said. “But it’ll be dark soon. We’re going to need light, and lots of it.”
“Mark,” she said, squeezing her other brother’s hand, “round up every lantern you can find and bring them into—”
“On my way,” the boy said before she could finish.
The doctor took off his suit coat
and draped it over a dining room chair. “I’ll need bandages, and some hickory shakes will do for splints….”
She lifted her skirt and started up the steps. “I’ve got a bureau drawer full of clean old sheets. I’ll rip them into strips.”
Doc looked at Matthew, pale and still, then turned his dark gaze to Micah’s worried face. He led the father several yards away from the boy, who still lay limp and weak on the litter. “He’s lost a lot of blood,” he said, unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt. “And there’s a good chance infection has set in. I won’t know what more I might find until I cut away the damaged tissue.”
Micah’s somber face paled. He ran both hands through his thinning, gray hair. “Will he….” He cleared his throat. “Will he lose the leg?”
“I can’t say one way or the other.”
Micah glanced at his son. “He looks so young and helpless, lying there,” he whispered, more to himself than to the doctor. “He will walk again, won’t he?”
“God willing.”
Micah shook his head. “Is there anything I can do, Doc?”
“Pray,” he said. “Pray good and hard.”
***
The makeshift operating room glowed bright with lamplight. Once she’d shoved all the chairs against the walls and drew the curtains, Bess covered the table with several thick, soft quilts, then draped line-dried sheets over them. After dipping Doc’s surgical tools into boiling water, she placed each in order by size on the sheet-covered serving cart, which she’d rolled up beside the table.
She’d watched Mary assist once in delivering a baby when Doc performed a new technique known as a Cesarean Section. He’d used dozens of rags to blot up the blood; she presumed he’d need at least that many, now. The old linen napkins in the buffet would do nicely, she decided, stacking the neatly-folded squares near Doc’s scalpels and clamps. Finally, a mountain of clean, white bandages, made by tearing bedsheets in to strips, lay at the foot of the table.
Doc instructed Chance and Micah to position Matt on the table. They did, then stepped helplessly back into the shadows. Mark, still wringing his hands, stood between them.
“Get on out of here, the three of you,” Doc growled. “Your sour faces are makin’ me nervous.” Pointing toward the door, he added, more gently, “We’ll let you know when it’s over.”
They seemed almost too eager to obey. The men and the boy immediately set to pacing back and forth across the front porch. Bess hoped they wouldn’t keep it up for very long, because if the constant thud thud thud of boot heels striking wood distracted Doc like it distracted her….
She stormed to the front door and flung it open. “You boys take that pacing to the corral before you get Doc’s hands to shakin’ and he cuts something he didn’t intend to!”
They were off the porch before the door closed behind her.
“This could get messy, Bess,” Doc said when she returned. “You might want to protect your pretty frock.”
She tucked in one corner of her mouth. “Since when have you known me to be afraid of a little mess?”
Smiling, the white-haired gent loosened his tie, rolled up his sleeves, and instructed Bess to copy his method of scrubbing up. Seeing this, Matt suspected what would happen next, and began to cry softly. Holding her now-sterile hands aloft, Bess leaned over and kissed his forehead. “It’s going to be fine, Matthew,” she whispered. “It’ll be over before you know it.”
“Promise?”
Winking, she forced a cheery, confident smile onto her face. “Promise,” she said, kissing him again.
Doc dampened a cloth with a few drops of ether and draped it over Matt’s nose and mouth. “Take a deep breath, Matthew,” he said. “Start counting, backwards, from one hundred.”
“One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight….”
Doc capped the small brown bottle and placed it on the table near Matt’s head. “Every few minutes, put another drop on the cloth,” he instructed Bess. “Not too much now, or he’ll never regain consciousness.”
Bess licked her lips and nodded. Too little, and her brother would feel intense pain. Too much and—
“…ninety-four, ninety-three….” Matt’s voice, slow and weak, waned. “Ninety-two, ninety-one….” By the time he got to ninety, he was sound asleep.
While she’d been comforting her brother, the doctor had fastened a tourniquet around the boy’s thigh. “Doc…is that rawhide?”
“It is indeed,” he said, pulling the last knot tight.
“But it’s wet….”
He peered over his half glasses and frowned. “Yes?”
“When it dries, it’ll be tighter still. Won’t that hurt him even more?”
Straightening, the old man pursed his lips. “Yes. Yes, it could indeed.” Shaking his head, he added, “But that’s all I have to tie the—“
Bess lifted the hem of her skirt and began tearing the lacy ruffle from her petticoat.
“Surely we can find something else….”
She branded him with a hard look. “Why should we waste time looking for something else when we have this, right at hand?”
Doc replaced the leather with cotton, then picked up a scalpel and said to his sleeping patient, “May God be with you,” and made the first incision.
***
Three and a half hours later, Matt woke up in his own bed. He looked around woozily, blinked, and groaned. “Bess…?”
“I’m here, Matthew,” she said, stroking his cheek. “Right here.”
The boy winced. “It hurts, Bess.”
“I’m sure it does.” She reached for the bottle of tonic Doc had left on the bedside table, then guided a spoonful of the dark syrupy liquid between Matt’s lips. “This will help some,” she said, using her thumb to wipe away the drop that had escaped the corner of his mouth. “Go back to sleep now, and you won’t notice the pain so much.”
He lifted his head and looked toward the foot of his bed. “Am I gonna be all right?”
Her heart lurched in her chest. Doc had explained every possibility. Matt’s youth, the old man had said, was on his side. In all likelihood, the boy would recover. But…Matt could walk with a limp for the rest of his life, and infection, if indeed it had set in during the long ride home, gangrene could set in and—
Bess refused to think about that horrible possibility. “You’re going to be fine, just fine, you hear me!”
He lay back, soothed by her pledge, and closed his eyes.
There was so much to do, and now that he seemed to be resting peacefully, she got up to do it.
The instant she stood, Matt’s eyes flew open. “Don’t go, Bess,” he pleaded, reaching for her hand.
She sat beside him on the bed and gently stroked his bandaged arm. “All right, sweet Matthew, I’ll stay.”
“Thanks, Bess,” he murmured.
“I love you, Matthew,” she answered.
He closed his eyes, and in moments, slept.
She didn’t seem to notice the bloodstains on her favorite blue dress. Didn’t seem to notice, either, that much of her dark hair had escaped the lovely braid she’d plaited that morning. Didn’t seem to notice that her cheeks were streaked with sweat…and her brother’s blood.
But Chance noticed.
Only when she was sure that Matt slept soundly did she leave his side, and only then, to clean up the dining room. “Can’t have Pa coming in here and seeing all this,” she muttered, piling the bloodstained sheets and napkins and used bandages onto the serving cart. “It’ll upset him no end.” She seemed unaware that she was chattering like a chipmunk. “I’ll just put these in a tub on the mud porch to soak,” she added, scrubbing blood from the table top with one of the clean rags. “Tomorrow, once Matt’s had a good night’s sleep, I’ll wash ‘em up good and proper, and hang them on the line to dry. The sun will bleach some of the stains out,” she said, on her hands and knees now, wiping up the blood that had dripped from the table onto the wide-planked pine boards. She didn’t hear t
he tremor in her voice. Didn’t realize that her tears had mingled with Matt’s blood on the floor.
When he couldn’t stand to watch her suffering a moment longer, Chance grabbed her by the shoulders and brought her to her feet.
Immediately, she tried to drop back to her knees and resume scrubbing, but he held firm. “Bess,” he said softly, “stop it. Stop your cryin’ now.”
She looked around the room helplessly. “But he’s so young, Chance. And Doc said….” She bit her lip, then turned away, crossed both arms over her chest and cupped her elbows. “What if he…what if he never walks again?” She hesitated. Shook her head. “What if….”
He’d warned himself on his first day at Foggy Bottom to be careful, because he knew the danger of being drawn into relationships he couldn’t afford to maintain. The proof of his rightness stood trembling in his arms now.
He’d never seen fear in her big dark eyes before. Had never seen that full lower lip quiver as she struggled to hold back her tears. She’d always been in complete control. Seeing her like this, looking so small and vulnerable, moved him like few things ever had.
He’d have shifted heaven and earth at that moment to give her the solace she sought, to find the words to assure her that her little brother would be all right. But Chance had no such power, and he knew it. Why, he didn’t even have the power to prove he hadn’t killed a man!
Still, he didn’t want her to know how weak and inept he was. So he held her tight and stroked her slender back and whispered soft into her ear. “He’ll be fine,” was all he could think to say. “He’ll be just fine.”
“If he survives, he could have a limp for the rest of his life!”
Laying a hand against her cheek, he said, “I’d take on his limp, just to have a woman like you caring for me the way you care for that boy.” He felt almost as helpless and useless as he had on the day of the fire…. In response to her wet-eyed silence, he added, “Doc said he’d likely be all right, didn’t he?”
She nodded against his chest.
“And you trust Doc, don’t you?”
Again she nodded, a little harder this time.
Chance could feel her warm tears seeping through the fabric of his shirt. He held her at arm’s length, and, for a moment, just looked at her. Her long, dark lashes clumped with glistening tears. With the pad of his thumb, he tenderly brushed the dampness away. He hated to see her this way, and searched his mind for a sentence, a phrase, a word, even, that would get her mind off Matt, if only for a moment. “I don’t suppose there’s a slice of your famous cherry pie in the kitchen….”
