by Jo Goodman
“There!” said Annalea, waving her hand up and down. “I see John Henry! Over there.” She stopped waving and grabbed Cutter by the elbow to guide him as he was guiding the horse. “Do you see him?”
Cutter did. “You stay down in the back, Miss Annalea. Under the blankets would be better than out of them.”
Annalea made a face with every intention that he should see it.
Willa clamped her hand over Annalea’s head and firmly pushed her down. “Do what Cutter says. We will let you know when you can get out of the wagon.” Willa noted that Annalea complied, albeit with little grace. And as compliance was all she cared about at the moment, she said nothing.
Cutter had not brought the wagon to a full stop before Willa hopped down. She left the shotgun with him and walked straightaway for the circle of trampled grass, opening her jacket and resting her hand lightly on the butt of her Colt. It was only when she reached John Henry and the stranger that her hand fell away.
It was clear at first glance that the man posed no threat. What required further investigation was whether or not he was breathing. Willa snapped her fingers to move John Henry out of the way, but he remained steadfastly obedient to the orders of his mistress and stayed nestled in the crook of the man’s arm.
“Call your dog!”
Willa winced as Annalea’s shrill whistle split the air around her, but John Henry leaped to the extent that his short legs would permit and hurried off toward the wagon. Shaking her head, Willa hunkered beside the stranger and bent her ear toward his mouth.
“You must be the help.”
Startled as much by the warmth of his breath on her cheek as she was by his speech, Willa jerked back and stared into a pair of plainly pained and singularly colored blue-gray eyes.
“Wilhelmina Pancake. Willa.”
“Ah.”
He closed his eyes, and Willa was tempted to check for breathing again. She motioned for Cutter instead. “Bring the bandages and blankets. We can tend to some of these wounds before we put him in the wagon.” She began to lift Annalea’s coat but paused when the man shivered mightily. “It’s got to be done,” she said. “Hurry up, Cutter.” She handed off the coat and took the bandages and blankets when Cutter arrived.
Cutter tossed Annalea her coat and then bent to help Willa. He whistled softly. “It’s like she said. He’s in a bad way.”
“He can hear you,” Willa told him. “Dip a couple of bandages in the run and wring them out. I’ll clean the scrapes. How do you feel about putting the shoulder back in place?”
“Squeamish.”
Willa and Cutter stared at the stranger because the response had come from him, and even though his eyes remained closed, it was as if he knew they were regarding him with equal parts astonishment and wariness because he said in a voice as abraded as his flesh, “I have a say, don’t I?”
Willa glanced at Cutter, who she saw was looking a bit squeamish now that the stranger had spoken, and said, “I’ll figure it out.”
Cutter nodded and was off to do her bidding before she changed her mind. The stranger said nothing.
“There’s really no choice,” said Willa. “Not if you hope to have full use of your arm again. I can help you sit up if you can’t do it on your own. I promise you the ride back to the house will be easier if I fix your shoulder now.”
He made a small movement that might have been a shrug or a pathetic attempt to rise. Willa took it as the latter and slipped one arm under his back. He was not much in the way of help as she began to lift, and she could have used Cutter just then to lend some strength, but she heaved and he groaned with her effort and his own, and between them he came to a sitting position.
Willa could now see more evidence of his injuries. His jacket, vest, and shirt were shredded, and beads of dried blood, like so many black pearls, dotted the length of the abrasions. Under her examination, the lean muscles of his back jumped once and then were still. She tore her eyes away and said, “Tell me what happened.”
“Do you need the distraction for what you’re about to do or is it for my benefit?”
“Can’t it be for both those things? Besides, you are going to do most of the work.”
“I am?”
Willa nodded as she studied his legs. Annalea had said one of them was turned at an awkward angle, but that was not the case now. They were lying straight in front of him, the feet slightly turned out. “Start with what happened to your left shoe.”
“I don’t know where my shoe is.”
“Which is not quite the same as telling me how you came to lose it.”
He said nothing.
“Can you draw your knees toward your chest?” He grunted softly as he showed her that he could. “Wrap your arms around your knees. Palms over your kneecaps.” Because his movements were slow and cautious, and she could hear the short, stuttered breaths he took, Willa thought Annalea was right about him having some cracked ribs. She lent him assistance, making sure his fingers were laced and the thumbs were up before she released him. “Grip tightly.”
He frowned in anticipation of what was coming.
Willa looked up as Cutter returned. “Find a place to stand so Annalea can’t see. I don’t need eyes in the back of my head to know she’s watching.”
Cutter’s eyes darted in the direction of the wagon. “That’s a fact.” He stepped sideways and blocked Annalea’s view. “Does he have a name?”
“Imagine so. He hasn’t offered it, and I haven’t asked.”
“She was more interested in what happened to my shoe.”
Cutter’s mouth twisted to one side in a look of perfect puzzlement. He scratched behind his ear. “Is that right, Willa?”
“It is.”
“I guess you have your reasons.”
“That’s right.” She saw that the stranger’s grip had loosened, and she pressed his hands together. “In a moment I want you to lean back. Not far, not fast. I’ll tell you when. Cutter, stay where you are. I’m going to move behind him to cushion him if his grip fails and he falls backward.” Willa dropped to her knees and then into position. She laid her hands lightly on the stranger’s shoulders. “All right. Lean back now.”
The first movement was tentative, testing, and Willa put some strength into her fingers so he could feel the weight of them. “More,” she said. “Lean back more. I’ve got you.”
He did, this time with more confidence. His knuckles were bloodless, but the grip remained firm.
“You can shout,” Cutter said.
Willa added, “Curse if you have a mind to.”
“That’s right,” said Annalea, stepping out from behind Cutter. John Henry appeared from under her skirt and between her legs. “There’s no ears here that haven’t heard the like before, and that includes Mr. John Henry. As I recall, I heard you blaspheme on earlier acquaintance.”
“Jesus,” he said under his breath.
Annalea nodded sagely. “That’s what I recall, too.”
Willa looked sharply at Annalea. “I told you to stay in the wagon. Cutter, how did she get around you?”
He flushed but held his ground. “Sneaky as a sidewinder.”
“I am,” said Annalea, clearly proud.
“Then bring your sneaky self over here and hold his knees.” She tapped her patient on his uninjured shoulder when Annalea was in place. “You don’t have to hug him that hard.”
“Oh.” Annalea offered the stranger a rueful smile. “Sorry.”
Willa thought she heard him curse under his breath again, but it might have been intended as a prayer this time. “Keep leaning back,” she told him. “That’s it. Stretch. More. More.”
There was an audible popping sound when the shoulder joint realigned. Willa, Annalea, and Cutter all blinked. The stranger groaned once and then was silent. A heartbeat later his laced fingers unwou
nd, his hands dropped away from his knees, and he collapsed against Willa.
“I didn’t expect him to faint,” Willa said, carefully lowering him to the ground. “But maybe that’s better all the way around. It will ease the ride back for him and us.” She shooed John Henry out of the way as the dog came forward to sniff the stranger. “Annalea, put John Henry in the wagon and fetch me a cloth large enough to make a sling.” She stretched out an arm toward Cutter. “The damp cloths, please.”
While Willa tended to the stranger’s cuts and scrapes, the rope burns around his wrists, Cutter walked off with the shotgun to explore the clearly marked trail made by dragging the man onto Pancake land. Annalea stayed with Willa, assisting now and again, but mostly she sat cross-legged at their patient’s feet, still and contemplative.
Willa tied off the sling and critically eyed her work. She looked to Annalea to invite comment. When none was forthcoming, Willa made a small adjustment to the knot and padded it with a cloth she folded into quarters.
“You are uncharacteristically quiet,” she said. When Annalea had no response to that, she added, “And apparently deep in thought.”
“Hmm.” Annalea’s eyes did not stray from the stranger. She was leaning forward, chin cupped in her palms, her elbows resting on her knees. “Do you figure him for a criminal?”
“Hard to make a judgment there. Is that what you’re trying to do?”
“Uh-huh. I am wondering about the nature of his activities. It’s a sure thing you don’t get dragged behind a horse and left for dead if somebody ain’t pissed at you.”
One of Willa’s dark eyebrows kicked up. “Language.”
“Sorry. If somebody isn’t pissed at you.”
Willa’s lips twitched, but the raised eyebrow stayed in place a moment longer. “Have you considered that Happy might know him?”
Annalea’s head lifted a fraction as she frowned deeply. “Why would Pa know him?”
“Because he spends considerably more time in Jupiter than any of the rest of us.”
“Yes, but mostly he’s in the Liberty Saloon or the jailhouse.” Her frown faded, replaced by a lopsided grin as she comprehended her sister’s point. “Oh. I see. Liberty or the jail.”
“Happy could have made his acquaintance in either place,” said Willa. “But if it happened, I’m inclined to think it was probably the jail.”
“He and Pa might have shared a cell. Wouldn’t that be something?”
Willa did not hear any condemnation in Annalea’s tone. In fact, she seemed unreasonably intrigued by the notion. “I was not suggesting that they shared a cell. I was thinking of the posters hanging in the sheriff’s office. Happy might have seen this man’s likeness on one of those.” Shrugging, Willa returned her regard to the man’s countenance. Where the skin wasn’t scraped, it was bruised, and where it wasn’t colored red and purple, it was ash. Sometime during her ministrations, the left side of his face had begun to swell. If he tried to open his eyes, he would only be able to see out of one. That struck Willa as a damn shame, although not, she reflected, for the same reasons it would strike him. She was remembering the exceptional clarity and color of his blue-gray eyes. “Right now I am hard put to believe his mother would recognize him.”
Annalea nodded in agreement. “He seems worse off than when I found him. I didn’t think that was possible.”
Willa started to explain how that had come to pass, but her attention was caught by Cutter’s shout from two hundred yards up the hillside. “What’s he saying?” she asked Annalea. “And what has he got in his hand?”
Annalea had already jumped to her feet. “It’s the shoe. He found the shoe.”
“Lot of fussing for a shoe, though I expect this fellow will be glad of it. Wave Cutter back here. We need to go.”
Annalea cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted for Cutter.
“Not what I asked,” Willa said dryly. “And here comes John Henry. I’m not sure the dog knows his name yet, but he does recognize that come-to-me cry of yours. Go on, Annalea. Walk him out to meet Cutter.” After Annalea and the dog hurried off, Willa spread one of the blankets on the wagon bed and another beside her patient.
“What about your name? It’s the least of what we need to know, but we have to call you something.” She did not really expect a response, but she did not think she imagined a shift in his breathing. Could he hear her? She pressed on, regarding him more keenly. “On the other hand, Dr. Frankenstein’s monster never had a name, and truth be told, you put me a little in mind of him.”
Willa waited for a twitch and was rewarded when she glimpsed his long fingers curling the merest fraction. It was something at least, although if she were being strictly honest, she had hoped that it would be his mouth that twitched. Because all things considered, it was rather a nice mouth. Not particularly amused by the odd thought, Willa reined herself in as she gathered the soiled cloths and went down to the run’s gently sloping bank to rinse them. She had just finished wringing them out when Cutter and Annalea returned, John Henry quite literally dogging their footsteps.
Willa slung the damp cloths around her neck and stood. She absently brushed herself off as she approached the trio. “Did you find anything besides that shoe?”
“Bits and pieces of clothing. Evidence that there were four horses, but I think only three other men. Best as I could figure out, he rode with them for a ways, probably from town, before things took a turn. Could’ve been planned from the outset, and they surprised him, or maybe he had his suspicions and no choice in the matter. Plenty of good hanging trees back there, and we know they had a rope, but I can’t say if that was their intention and they had a change of mind.”
Willa nodded. “Lots of ways to kill a man, but if his death is less important than his suffering . . .” Her voice drifted off.
“Yep.”
Cutter’s laconic response prompted Willa’s rueful smile. “You think you can put that shoe on him without twisting the foot overmuch?”
“Sure.” Cutter immediately bent to the task.
“We are going to move him onto the blanket and carry him to the wagon. We will have to lift him over the side.”
“What can I do?” asked Annalea.
Willa did not have to think about it. “You have the naming of him. Choose carefully. It’s his until he decides it isn’t.”
Annalea straightened her shoulders and nodded gravely. She crooked a finger at John Henry and he dutifully followed her back to the wagon. She set him on the bed and climbed in, and the pair of them sat beside the stranger for the whole of the journey back. John Henry occasionally sniffed the man’s privates as if they might hold the secret to his identity while Annalea teased out his name in more conventional ways, testing them one by one on the tip of her tongue. By the time they reach the ranch, she had it.
“He is Augustus Horatio Roundbottom,” she announced when the wagon stopped.
Cutter asked, “Are you certain?”
“I am. I reckon he won’t cotton to being addressed with any variation of Augustus or the more formal Mr. Roundbottom, and we will have the truth out of him soon enough.”
Willa’s smile was perfectly serene. She nudged Cutter with her elbow and whispered, “That’s my girl.”
Chapter Two
Willa directed Annalea to get help, which she once again did by using her lungs, not her feet. Zach came on a loping run, while Happy followed much less steadily, and the newly named Mr. Roundbottom was taken to the bunkhouse to be tended, which involved stripping away his tattered clothes, assessing the extent of his injuries, and then giving him a thorough scouring.
“Is he going to live?” Annalea asked from her position in the open doorway. She stood on tiptoes and craned her neck to see over her sister’s bent shoulder, and when that gave her no view, she ducked her head to try to peek between Willa’s elbow and Cutter’s hip. Cut
ter stepped sideways, closed the gap, and Annalea’s exasperation was audible.
Willa’s attention to her task never wavered. “What were you told, Annalea?”
The thread of impatience in Willa’s voice was not something one could miss; therefore, Annalea was simply ignoring it. “I want to see,” she said stubbornly. “I found him.”
“That doesn’t make him yours.”
“I named him.”
Happy set his shoulder against the bunkhouse’s log wall and crossed his arms in front of him. He almost accomplished the stance casually, but at the last moment, he lost his equilibrium and more or less tipped sideways.
“Annalea,” Willa said. “Escort your pa to the house.”
“But—”
“Go on. And mind that if he stumbles, you don’t go down with him. I’ve got my hands full.”
Zach knuckled the underside of his salt-and-pepper chin stubble and looked over at Happy. “How about we finish supper?” He cocked his head toward the door, where Annalea continued to hover. “She can set the table.”
Willa smiled to herself, appreciative of Zach quietly stepping into the breach.
Zachary Englewood had been a young man, not much older than Cutter was now, when he came to work for the Pancakes. With his preternatural gift for knowing good horseflesh, he proved his worth to Obadiah early on. When the patriarch died, there was no question in anyone’s mind that he would stay, even though times had turned hard with bad weather and plunging cattle prices. He was a good wrangler, a better than middlin’ cook, and had a steady hand with the horses, but his real value to Willa had always been his ability to manage her father. He was not a peacekeeper or a confidant to either of them, but he had a way of knowing what needed to be done, and he did it.
Happy pursed his lips, moved them side to side as he thought. “I’m cogitating. Can’t say that I care for the name ‘Roundbottom.’”
Annalea gave him a narrow-eyed look, one that she had seen Willa use to great effect. “Then you tell us his true name.”
