What possible reason would his friend have for traveling all the way out to Colorado to find him? It wouldn’t be news about his mother. If it had been, it would be too late for him to do anything about it from Colorado. He couldn’t imagine Runyon doing anything but sending a wire if it were about his mother.
If it were news about Stanton, Runyon would have wasted the trip. Smythe already knew about his cousin. Maybe he had news about Michael.
The shot caught him unawares, nicking the brim of his hat, shooting it clean off his head.
His horse reared. Smythe wrapped his arms around the beast’s quivering neck and pressed his thighs tight against the animal’s sides until his legs ached.
Before he could try to coax the animal to calm down, another shot rang out. His shoulder burned. His hand let go of the reins to grab his shoulder, but his legs still worked. He squeezed them hard against his horse.
The poor beast stood on his hind legs again, pawing frantically at the air. Smythe grabbed the reins and hung on, wrestling the horse down on all fours. For a heartbeat he had won control. His breath was short, choppy, and he’d used too much of what precious energy he had left.
The third shot obliterated a small rock between the horse’s front feet.
Flung from the saddle, Smythe’s last thought was of Pearl.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Davidson!”
Pearl’s heart still raced in her breast and was trying to pound its way up her throat. She’d followed the riderless horse back to the same spot where she’d been ambushed only a few days ago. Dropping to her knees beside his still form, she prayed he was only unconscious.
“What happened?” She ran her hands over his face, checking for signs of injury. There were none. He didn’t answer, but she couldn’t stop talking.
“Where’s your hat?” She thought of the day they’d met and how angry she’d been, shooting the hat from his head. Dear God, had someone else actually done the same to him?
Her hands trembled, gently lifting his head to check the back of it for a bump that would explain his stillness.
There was a small bump, but not big enough to explain his unconscious state.
Needing to help, not quite able to think straight, she eased him back down and ran to her horse for the canteen she’d filled with water. Dashing back to his side, she knelt once again, shifting his head onto her lap. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a thin linen handkerchief. She folded it in half and then in half again, then opened the canteen and carefully dripped water onto the cloth.
As gently as possible, she began to bathe his face, hoping the cool water would revive him. Sweat beaded on her upper lip, although the day was not as warm as it could be. She was afraid. What was wrong with him?
“Maybe a drink?”
She trickled water onto his closed mouth. He moaned and opened his mouth, his tongue coming out to lick his lips.
“Davidson? Please wake up. Tell me what happened!”
A warm, sticky sensation seeping onto her left knee had the breath snagging in her lungs. “You’ve been shot!”
With trembling hands, she shifted him toward her breast so she could see his back. Blood oozed from a hole near the edge of his shoulder blade. There was no blood on the front of him. The bullet was still inside!
The sound of a fast-moving wagon sounded in the distance. Help was on its way. Her girls, bless them. Rather than move him, she held him gently, fighting against the need to rock him gently, and waited for the wagon to stop.
Amy set the brake and jumped down, stumbling in her haste to reach them. “How bad is it?”
Pearl’s mouth was dry as dust, but she managed to croak, “Shot—his shoulder.”
Amy looked down at the man in Pearl’s arms and shook her head, “But there’s no bullet wound.”
Tears pooled in Pearl’s eyes. “Someone shot him in the back.”
Amy stiffened, then straightened up and looked over her shoulder. “Daisy, smooth out those blankets we brought with us. Nellie, bring that wad of fabric over here. Mary, ride over to Flaherty’s ranch. It’s the closest. Bring help!”
Thankful Amy had taken over. Pearl let the girl’s voice fade away while she focused on the face of the man in her arms.
Don’t let him bleed to death! Don’t let him die!
God help her, she couldn’t imagine life without him. Someone had shot her man. Fear gave way to anger. Her whole body thrummed with it. No one hurt the people she loved and got away with it!
“Pearl!”
Her head shot up. “What?”
“I said are you ready to move him into the wagon?”
Pearl blew at a lock of hair caught on her eyelashes. “He’s heavy and it’s quite a ways up into the back of it.” A tear trickled down her cheek, landing at the corner of her mouth; she licked at it, catching the taste of salt upon her tongue. Tears wouldn’t help Davidson. Using her head instead of her heart would.
“Did you fill the flask with whiskey like I asked?”
“I have it,” Nellie said.
“I need it.”
Nellie hopped down and brought it to where Pearl sat in the middle of the road. Pearl looked up at Nellie. “This won’t be easy, and Mr. Smythe might yell some.”
The young woman nodded.
“Amy, come help me hold him,” Pearl ordered. “Daisy, hold the horses.” Bracing herself to do something she wasn’t sure would help, but hoped would, Pearl nodded as Daisy picked up the reins to Pearl’s horse and walked him over to stand beside the other one hitched to the wagon. Daisy held the horse by the bridle, whispering sweet nothings to him, no doubt.
Praying she was doing the right thing, Pearl asked Nellie to uncork the flask while she scooted farther out from under where Davidson was wounded, so she could see the gunshot wound.
“It’s no use. I’ve got to lift him up on his side. Amy?”
Amy helped to shift him, until he was lying on his uninjured side.
Pearl’s gaze locked with hers. “I’m going to pour whiskey over the wound, then press this whiskey-soaked cloth to it.”
Amy nodded.
“No matter what happens, don’t try to help me. It will be all I can do to hold him still once the burning starts.”
“It’s going to burn?” Nellie cried out.
Pearl nodded and looked over her shoulder. “But it should help clean out the wound until we can get Doc out here to remove the bullet.”
“But will it hurt him?” the young woman insisted.
Pearl nodded. “Sometimes you have to hurt someone in order to help him.”
With one last glance at her girls, Pearl screwed her courage to the sticking point, grabbed the shirt where the bullet had gone through and ripped it open. Taking a deep breath, she poured whiskey over the wound. Davidson’s roar of pain arrowed right through her, but she knew she hadn’t covered the entire area. She tipped the flask again.
This time, his body jerked, trying to move away from the pain. She wrapped herself around him, “Davidson, please. I’m not trying to hurt you.”
“Sonofabitch!”
“Just a little more, then I’ll stop,” she promised.
“Brave words coming from my torturer.”
“I was trying to clean the wound.”
He shifted, flopping over onto his knees, stirring up a small cloud of dust.
“Wait, you shouldn’t try to move.”
“I thought that’s why you poured liquid fire over my shoulder, to get me on my feet.”
Anger licked through her aching belly. “You hard-headed bear of a man! I was trying to keep it from getting infected. There is no exit wound.”
Amy’s sharply indrawn breath told Pearl at least her oldest had figured it out.
“Doc’s going to have to remove it.”
Davidson wobbled, but managed to sit upright, pushing to lean back on his heels.
Pearl moved around behind him, letting him catch his breath. When he did, she lea
ned close. “I need to press this against the wound. To stop the bleeding.”
He nodded.
“This may hurt.”
“But it has to be done,” he rasped.
Pearl pressed the wad of whiskey-soaked fabric to his back. “I don’t have anything to wrap around it,” she whispered. “I’ll have to hold it.”
Davidson’s breathing sounded shallow. She knew he’d lost a lot of blood, had seen the spot where he’d been lying. The pool of dark liquid made her stomach roil.
“Can you make it into the wagon?” Daisy called out.
He started to shake his head, then moaned. “No.”
“We can try to lift you,” Amy offered.
“All three of you wouldn’t be able to lift me into the wagon,” he muttered.
“Just the two of us,” Pearl insisted. “Nellie is too small to hold both horses. Daisy has to help her.”
Davidson’s gaze found hers. If he saw her fear there, he didn’t acknowledge it. “Well then, I’ll give it my best.”
“Just lean on me. Amy and I will help you walk.”
“My legs still work. It’s my head that feels funny.”
“Your head?” Daisy asked from where she stood with the horses.
“Loss of blood.” Pearl tried not to focus on the drying pool of blood beneath where Davidson had lain in the road.
“Who could have shot you?” she wondered aloud. “And in the back!” With the disbanding of the committee, it could be any number of disgruntled people in town.
Davidson leaned most of his weight against her. “Whom do you think shot at you?”
She opened her mouth to speak then thought better of it. What good would it do to speculate? Whoever had taken the shots at her could be long gone. “Could have been someone just passing through town who liked the look of my horse, thinking I’d be easy to convince to part with it.”
Davidson winced as he tried to pull himself up onto the back of the wagon.
“Not like that.” She couldn’t believe the man would try to use his injured arm like that. He’d obviously lost so much blood he wasn’t thinking straight. “Face the other way and grab hold of the looped rope there.”
Pointing to the small loop of rope, she urged him to grab hold. With a nod to Amy, both women braced their shoulders against his lower back and pushed him up onto the bed of the wagon.
His moan of pain sliced through her. Not now, she thought, time enough to feel sorry for him once he’s safely back at the ranch.
“The shooter could still be out there,” Daisy whispered, walking to the back of the wagon. “What should we do?”
Pearl acknowledged the fear in the young woman’s eyes, but didn’t dare give in to the crippling emotion. She’d not given in when O’Toole and his gang threatened her girls; she was not going to give in to fear now, when Davidson and her girls depended on her to get them back to the ranch house in one piece.
The short ride to the house seemed interminable. She’d tied Davidson’s horse to the back of the wagon. Amy drove. Daisy held the bandage pressed against his back while Nellie sat on the other side of Davidson to keep him from moving too much and jarring his shoulder. They’d gotten the bleeding to mostly stop.
Pearl sat beside Amy with her Winchester across her knees, ready to take aim and fire. Just show yourself, she thought, you lily-livered coward!
A movement off to the right startled her. She brought the rifle up and fired. A bird flew out of the brush.
“Damnation!”
She noticed the way everyone stared at her. She’d succeeded in startling every person on the wagon and the poor bird.
“I’ve already got a stew simmering on the cookstove,” she told no one in particular, hoping to take everyone’s mind off her trigger-happy reaction. She felt foolish enough, but was still ready to shoot anything that moved. These were her girls and this was the man she loved.
Loved. How could it have happened so quickly? Quickly, hah! She’d felt the first stirrings for Davidson Smythe the day he’d come up her front walk. How long ago had it been? Time had a way of either dragging its heels or flying right on by a body.
Two weeks ago, she hadn’t known Davidson Smythe existed. Random thoughts and questions sprinted through her mind as the wagon drew them closer to home.
Today, her whole world revolved around him. Unease roiled in her belly. Would he stay now that they knew who’d stolen the deed? What about his inheritance? Would he want to know why the committee wanted her land?
Would he still feel he had a stake in proving the Burnbaums guilty of land fraud, or would he go back home and wait for the law to sort everything out? Now that he’d been shot at, would he decide life out West was too uncivilized for him?
He would recover. She’d put every ounce of strength and grit she could muster up into seeing that he did. She sure as hell wasn’t ready to set him loose yet, besides, he’d promised to teach her more about pleasure. It would help erase her memories of pain.
When they arrived at the ranch, Pearl jumped off the wagon and untied his horse. “Amy, Daisy, can you two take care of the horses?”
They agreed, and while Amy unhitched the plow horse from the wagon, Daisy took the reins Pearl held out to her and led the other one into the barn. Nellie jumped down, and before Pearl could stop him, Davidson climbed down.
“You could have waited,” she bit out. “I’d have helped.”
He shook his head. “You have enough to do around here without carrying me.”
Ignoring his comment, tamping down her rising temper, she put her arm around his back and walked slowly toward the house. Though he’d lost a lot of blood, he managed to hold his own and tried not to lean on her.
His step faltered and his legs buckled beneath him. Wrapping her arms around him, she tried to keep them both from falling onto the porch.
“Davidson, please! Wait for Daisy or Amy to help us.”
He clenched his jaw, narrowed his eyes, and pushed to his feet. “I’m going to make it inside before I fall on my face.”
“Spoken just like a man,” she mumbled beneath her breath. “A bull-headed, close-minded—”
“Mary’s back!”
Nellie’s voice had Pearl pausing in the doorway and looking over her shoulder. Mary rode hell-for-leather up the lane past the barn, Mick neck and neck with her.
“Mr. Smythe!” Mary called out, sliding from the horse’s back and running toward the house.
“He’ll be fine, Mary,” Pearl said, noticing the color leach from the girl’s face. “I just need to get him inside so I can tend to his wound.”
Daisy and Amy had the horses turned out into the corral before she could tell them to unsaddle the poor beasts. Knowing they’d go back and take care of them, she concentrated on Davidson. He needed all her attention now.
Mick and the girls came inside. He carried a bucket brimming with water in each hand.
Looking up from where she’d stood hovering over Davidson, she nodded. “Daisy, please start heating the tea kettle and a big pot of water.”
She maneuvered Davidson into the chair closest to the stove. “I’ll try not to hurt you”—she met his steady gaze—“but I’ve got to uncover the wound to get a better look at it.”
“Are you planning on removing the bullet too?” His eyes mirrored the pain she knew he had to be feeling.
“I’d hoped someone would ride into town and fetch Doc for me.” She looked hopefully at Mick.
“Reilly rode to town to fetch the doc. I was going to go,” Mick said, pouring water into the pot on top of the stove, “but he insisted I come back here with Mary.” He looked over at Pearl. “Just in case you needed a man to protect you.”
Davidson moaned as she pulled his shirt off his injured shoulder.
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not you,” he ground out, sweat beading on his upper lip and dripping from his temples. “Get it over with.”
One small piece of his shirt still
stuck to the bullet wound. When she tugged, he bit back a savage curse.
“I’m sorry.”
“Bloody hell! Stop apologizing.”
Tears filled Pearl’s eyes. He was right. Just get it done, she told herself. “Is the water ready yet?”
Mary nodded.
Pouring a bit of the water from the tea kettle into the two shallow bowls she’d placed on the table, Pearl ladled a bit of the cool water into one, then dipped her hands in the water, she sucked in a breath but ignored the heat, reaching for the sliver of lye soap.
After her hands were clean and dry, she gave the bowl to Amy to empty, and dropped another sliver of soap into the other bowl and began soaking strips of linen in it. Her hands burned; the water was hot enough to raise blisters, but she didn’t want to take a chance with infection and knew from what Doc had told her that cleaning the wound thoroughly was important. Blinking back tears, she forced herself to submerge the strips of linen and swish them in the steaming, soapy water.
With luck Doc’d be here soon. Pearl didn’t have any of the carbolic acid she knew would clean out the wound the best.
“This may hurt.” She waited until Davidson lifted his gaze to meet hers. He nodded and she squeezed out one of the rags and placed it on the bit of fabric that was stuck to the wound.
He sucked in a breath and shuddered.
Her heart went out to him. It had hurt like the very devil when they’d cleaned out where the bullet grazed her cheek. But this had to pain him considerably more. It was a bullet hole—and the bullet was still in there!
She couldn’t even begin to imagine the pain he must be suffering.
He reached out and grabbed hold of her hand. “Do you have any whiskey?”
“You know I do.”
“May I have some?”
“Mick?”
The boy nodded. Going to the cupboard, he got the bottle down, poured a short glass of the amber liquid, and handed it to Davidson.
“Thanks,” Davidson whispered before tossing back the contents of the glass. “Another?”
The Irish Westerns Boxed Set Page 62
