Cole followed, moving up close enough to watch through a gap in the circle of cowboys as Kent knelt on one knee beside a young man stretched out on the ground. Someone had put a bedroll under the hurt cowboy's head and covered him with a blanket. Kent pulled the blanket back carefully.
Cole's jaw tightened as he saw the way the injured man's midsection was caved in, almost flattened. The cowboy was breathing loudly and harshly, seeming to struggle to draw each breath into his body.
Kent glanced up at Sawyer. "What happened to him?" he asked.
"We cut out a calf for branding and took it out of the corral," Sawyer explained. "It was Sammy's job to swing the gate closed before the calf’s mama could come after it. He was a little too slow. The cow hit the gate, knocked him down, and trampled right over him trying to get to her baby."
"I . . . I'm sorry, boss," Sammy whispered as his eyes flickered open. "I tried to . . . get it closed. . . ."
"Don't you worry about it, Sammy," Sawyer assured him. "It wasn't your fault."
"The hell it. . . wasn't. . ."
"Please lie quietly," Kent told the young man as he examined the injury. Sammy closed his eyes again and subsided. Cole couldn't see the doctor's face from where he stood, but he could tell by the stiff set of Kent's back that what he saw wasn't good. Cole wasn't sure how Sammy had managed to live even this long, stove in like that.
One of the cowboys standing around the injured man spoke up suddenly. "You got to save him, Doc, you just got to. Sammy's a good fella. He don't deserve to die."
"Few people do," Kent snapped. "Now stand back, please."
Several of the other Diamond S hands echoed the sentiments, calling out to Sammy to hang on and exhorting Kent to do something for him. Finally, after several minutes of carefully probing Sammy's midsection, Kent looked up grimly at Kermit Sawyer.
"There's nothing I can do," the doctor said.
Sawyer's lips thinned and his brows drew down. "Sure there is," he insisted. "Sammy's busted up, sure, but I've seen men hurt worse—"
"Not that lived," Kent said bluntly. "The lad's back is broken, and there are massive injuries to his internal organs, not to mention internal bleeding. I'm afraid I simply can't save him."
Without warning, Sawyer's revolver was in his hand, the barrel staring at Kent's face. "You funny-talking son of a bitch," the cattleman grated. "You do something for him, and you shut your mouth about him dying. You want him to hear you?"
Kent's eyes widened slightly as he looked at the gun, but he sounded calm enough as he said, "The young man can't hear me, Mr. Sawyer. He's lost consciousness. I daresay that within a few moments it will all be over."
Several of the cowboys shouted angrily at Kent. This had gone on long enough, Cole decided—too long, as a matter of fact. He said loudly, "Holster that gun, Sawyer, or—"
"Or what?" Sawyer demanded curtly as he lifted his glower to meet Cole's angry stare. "Or you'll arrest me? You got no authority out here, Marshal. This is Diamond S land. I'm the law here, not you."
"Maybe so, but you know damned well that threatening the doctor's not going to do you any good. What are you going to do, shoot him if he doesn't work a miracle?" Cole snorted in disgust. "Hell, man, you need that Scripture-spouting blacksmith out here to say a prayer over the boy. There's nothing else Dr. Kent or anybody else can do."
"I'm afraid Marshal Tyler is correct, Mr. Sawyer," Kent said quietly. He reached down and rested a couple of fingers on Sammy's neck. "In fact, the poor lad has passed on, I'm sorry to say."
"He's dead?" The gun shook a little in Sawyer's hand as he asked the harsh question.
Kent nodded.
Some of the Diamond S hands started to shout angrily again, but Sawyer silenced them with a curt gesture. He shoved the revolver back in its holster and said, "All right, that's enough. I'm as sorry about Sammy as the rest of you boys, but he was right—it was his own damned fault for not watching that cow closer and getting that gate shut in time. Now let's get on about our business." He squared his shoulders. "Somebody put out that branding fire. We've got burying to do." Sawyer looked at Cole with hate-filled eyes and added, "And we can do our own praying over him, by God!"
Kent stood up, and Cole said to him, "Come on, Judson. We're not needed here anymore."
Sawyer said, "You weren't needed here to start with, Tyler. You'd best stay in town and leave the range to those who belong on it. I don't want to see you on my land again."
"Fine by me," Cole told him. It was obvious that he and Sawyer rubbed each other the wrong way, and he didn't foresee that situation changing.
He kept an eye on the cattleman as he and Kent mounted up for the ride back to Wind River. Sawyer had called off his dogs, but the Texans were still proddy and muttering among themselves. One word from their boss, and there could still be trouble. Cole backed Ulysses away from the corrals while Kent turned the roan and rode back the way he had come. Not until the circle of cowboys closed in around their fallen comrade did Cole turn his own horse and gallop after the doctor.
"For a moment there, I thought those young men were going to avenge their friend on us, as if we had something to do with his death," Kent commented as Cole drew alongside him and eased his horse back to a walk.
"They might have if Sawyer hadn't stopped them," Cole said. "Texans fly off the handle pretty easy, especially cowboys. I'd think twice about coming out here again to doctor them."
Kent stared at him. "I can't do that," he said. "If they need my services, I'll come, regardless of the danger. You should understand a man's devotion to his duty, Marshal, being a lawman and all."
"I'm starting to learn," Cole muttered. "I just hope our duties don't get us killed one of these days."
Chapter 9
Michael Hatfield leaned back in his chair and lifted the pencil he was holding to his mouth. His teeth clamped down on the wood without him even being aware of what he was doing. He stared at the sheet of paper on the desk in front of him, chewing on the end of the pencil as he read the words he had written.
Michael had always been his own harshest critic, and from time to time he crossed out a word and scribbled another in its place, then returned the pencil to his mouth and resumed gnawing on it. Only when he reached the end of the story he had just written did he stare in surprise at the wet, chewed end of the pencil and begin spitting flecks of wood from his mouth.
It was a good story, Michael thought, full of color and pathos. He had gotten the basics of the young cowboy's death from Dr. Judson Kent, then filled in a few more details by talking to Lon Rogers.
Michael had been a little hesitant about approaching the Texan when he spotted Lon in the Wind River Cafe the previous evening, but Lon was about the same age as Michael and seemed friendly enough. He had told Michael that the dead cowboy's name was Sammy Vaught and that like everybody else connected with the Diamond S, he had come from West Texas.
The story of the young man's tragic death was finished and ready to go in the next edition of the Sentinel, Michael judged. It wouldn't go to press for a couple of days, since the paper came out only twice a week and the previous edition had appeared the day before. Michael tossed the story into a wire basket with the other stories he had already written for the next edition.
This was one of his favorite days in the routine of newspaper publishing, the day when things began to pick up again and enthusiasm began to grow for the next edition. Of course, he had other favorites as well—the hustle and bustle of determining the layout and setting the type; the clatter of the press working as the paper was actually printed; the satisfaction of taking stacks of the finished paper around to the various stores in town where it was sold. . . . In fact, he loved virtually everything about the newspaper business, from the potent smell of the ink to the crisp sound of a freshly printed paper being unfolded. As the old saying went, printer's ink was in his blood.
The front door of the office slammed open, and a familial- voice said angrily, "Michael!"
>
He sat up sharply in his chair and looked up to see his pretty, pregnant, redheaded wife advancing toward him. As was becoming more and more common these days, Delia did not look happy. In fact, her green eyes were blazing and she was practically spitting fire.
Michael came to his feet and tried to grin. "Hello, darling," he ventured uneasily. "What brings you here?"
"You know perfectly well what brings me here!" she accused.
All Michael could do was shake his head in bewilderment. "I promise you, sweetheart, I don't."
"No, you probably don't." Delia crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. "You spend so much time here at this newspaper office that you have no idea what really goes on in your home. Have you even noticed that I've been unhappy recently?"
Only every time he stepped through the door of the little house he and his wife rented from Mr. Durand, Michael thought, but wisely he kept that reply to himself. He put his hands on Delia's shoulders and said, "Of course I've noticed. But why don't you tell me what's got you so upset today?"
She started to jerk away from him, then relented and sighed. "A horse—I don't know who it belonged to, probably some awful cowboy—but a horse was in our garden! It ate all my tomatoes and destroyed the bean plants, and when I ran out to shoo it off, I thought it was going to trample right over me! Nothing of this sort could ever happen back in Cincinnati!"
It seemed to Michael that a stray horse could cause some mischief just as easily in Cincinnati as in Wind River, but he knew Delia was in no mood to listen to logic. "I'm sorry, dear," he said sincerely. "I'll try to put up a better fence around the garden so that it won't happen again."
"You don't have to worry about that," Delia muttered. "The garden's already ruined."
"There, there. I'm sure the horse didn't eat everything."
"What he didn't eat, he stepped on!"
It might be time to change the subject, Michael decided. He asked, "Where's Gretchen?" Usually Delia brought their daughter with her when she came down here to stage one of her tirades.
"I left her over at Abigail Paine's house. Abigail promised to have her daughters look after Gretchen."
Michael frowned. "Are you sure that was wise? After all, this is the frontier. . . ."
Delia's head jerked up so that she could glower at him, and he knew too late that he had played right into her hands—again. "So you admit that this wilderness is no place to raise a child?" she demanded.
"Now, I didn't say—"
"You most certainly did! You said it wasn't safe for our daughter to be left with the neighbors. Good heavens, Michael, back in Cincinnati when I was a child, I practically lived at our neighbors' house."
He tried again. "You misunderstand me, Delia—"
"On the contrary, I think I understand you all too well, Michael Hatfield!" She waved a hand at the newspaper office surrounding them. "You think more of this . . . this clutter than you do of your own family!"
"Now, that's just not true," insisted Michael. "You know I love you and Gretchen both."
"Enough to take us back to civilization?"
Ah, there it was, Michael thought. The ever persistent question. Did he love his family enough to take them back east?
What Delia really meant, although she would never understand it, was did he love them enough to give up the dream that was finally in his hands?
Michael took a deep breath. "You know how much this job means to me, Delia. I've wanted to edit a newspaper for years, ever since I've known what a paper is."
"It's a job, Michael. You can get another job." She let a pleading tone come into her voice. "It would mean so much to Gretchen and me."
"I thought Gretchen was happy here. She's always playing and laughing when I'm around."
"Of course! She feels safe when you're there. But you don't hear her asking me if the badmen or the Indians are going to get her if she steps out of the house."
"The Indians have signed a peace treaty, and now that we have a marshal, we don't have to worry about badmen."
"Try explaining that to your daughter!" Delia snapped. "You know perfectly well you could take us home, Michael—if you weren't so selfish." Her voice was cold now, and to Michael that sounded worse somehow than the heat of anger.
Feeling suddenly weary of this argument, he told her, "I won't go back to being a printer's devil. I'm doing an important job here, Delia. A territory needs newspapers, especially a new territory like Wyoming. We're . . . we're the banner of civilization!" He added, "Besides, I can't let Mrs. McKay down. She's counting on me to keep the paper running."
"Oh." Delia packed a world of meaning into the syllable. "You won't let down Mrs. McKay, but you're perfectly willing to disappoint your wife and daughter." A shudder went through her, and she whispered, "I don't know you anymore, Michael Hatfield, and I'll not live with a man I don't know."
He took hold of her shoulders again. "What do you mean by that?"
This time she jerked out of his grasp. "I mean that I'm taking Gretchen and leaving."
Michael's eyes widened in shock. "You're going back to Cincinnati?" he asked in a stunned voice.
Delia hesitated. "I. . . I don't know. I was raised to believe that a wife doesn't desert her husband. . . ." An idea seemed to occur to her. "I'll take a room at the hotel. Gretchen and I will live there until I've decided what to do."
Michael shook his head, almost overcome by anger, frustration, and sorrow. "Come on, Delia! You can't leave me just because a horse got into the garden!"
She stared at him for a moment and then said quietly, "You actually believe that's all there is to this, don't you?" She laughed humorlessly and turned away from him.
Michael wanted to reach out for her, to call after her and stop her somehow as she walked slowly out of the newspaper office. At the very least he ought to follow her and try to talk some sense into her, he thought. But he had been talking to her ever since he had answered Andrew McKay's advertisement seeking an editor for the newly founded Sentinel and made the decision to come to Wind River. Sometimes it seemed he had done nothing but talk to Delia during the past couple of months. It was too late now for talking to do any good.
She stalked out of the office and Michael slumped back in his chair. At least she hadn't committed herself to leaving town with Gretchen just yet. That would be easy enough for her to do. The Union Pacific crews were building a roundhouse just west of the depot, and soon trains would be running regularly to Rawlins, Laramie, and points east. The journey back to Cincinnati would be much faster and easier than the trip by wagon out here. If Delia wanted to go through with this, there was nothing Michael could do to stop her.
He sat there in the office as the sun set and the room grew dim, and he wondered just how everything in life could go so wrong, so fast.
* * *
Michael Hatfield was not the only one with a visitor this evening. As Dr. Judson Kent was straightening his office after his last patient of the day had left, he glanced up in slight annoyance when the front door opened. It had been a long day, and Kent was ready for his supper and some reading in the medical journals he had brought west with him. However, he was nothing if not a professional, as he had told Marshal Tyler, and he put a carefully solicitous expression on his bearded face as a young woman stepped nervously into the room. "Yes?" Kent said. "Can I help you, miss?"
"I . . . I sure hope so," she said as she clutched a small purse tightly in her hands. "You're the doctor, ain't you? Dr. Kent?"
"That is correct. And you are . . . ?"
She looked surprised at the question. "You need to know my name?"
"It's customary for a doctor to know the names of his patients," Kent told her gently. "You've nothing to fear from me, young woman. Are you ill?"
She nodded. "Yeah, Doc. I'm sure sick. And my name . . . well, it's Becky Lewis."
Kent held out a hand toward her. "Come in, Miss Lewis. Or is it Mrs. Lewis?"
She laughed a little, but there wa
s no humor in the sound. "It's miss, all right," she said.
Kent ignored that for the moment. "Have a seat, and tell me what seems to be troubling you."
She came over to the chair in front of the desk, still looking rather apprehensive. Kent studied her in the light of the lamp on the desk and saw a young woman—a girl, really—who was probably not yet out of her teens. Her long hair was a little darker than the color of straw and was pulled back from her face. She wore a red dress with a neckline cut daringly low, but her figure was so slender and her bosom so skimpy that the effect was one of incongruousness rather than sensuality. Her features were plain but heavily painted. Kent didn't recall having seen her before, but he recognized her type. She was one of the nymphes des Prairies who had inhabited certain sections of Wind River even before the arrival of the railroad. The soiled doves had become even more numerous since the first train had rolled in with its cargo of hell-on-wheels saloons and brothels.
Becky Lewis kept her eyes downcast as she sat in front of the desk. Kent lowered himself into his own chair and waited for her to explain the purpose of her visit. When she didn't, he prodded, "You were going to tell me the nature of your problem, Miss Lewis?"
"I . . . I been sick lately. Can't keep nothin' down. Don't matter what I eat, it comes right back up."
"Does this condition go on all the time?" Kent asked.
"Well . . . I reckon it seems worse in the mornin's."
Kent closed his eyes for a second and tried not to sigh. Young women in Becky Lewis's profession were exposed to certain occupational hazards, and from the sound of what Becky was saying, she was suffering from one of the most common ones. He said carefully, "I don't wish to be indelicate about this, my dear, but have your breasts been rather tender lately, perhaps even swollen slightly?"
She frowned. "Yeah, they have. How'd you know?"
"And your, ah, monthlies . . . ?"
Becky's eyes widened. "They've got to where I can't depend on 'em at all, Doc. I ain't even sure when the last one was. I think it's been a couple of months."
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