Anita Mills (31 page)

“What?”

“This wound’s more than sixty hours old. Maybe she didn’t want anybody to know she hadn’t done anything for it. I’d say this leg started swelling up day before yesterday instead of today. It’s got to come off.”

“Oh, Spence—I’m so sorry—so very sorry.”

“I need chloroform, Laura, and I don’t have any. If I have to do it without putting him out, as bad as he is, the shock’s going to kill him.”

“I don’t want him to hear that.”

“He’s too sick for it to sink in. He told me the leg was gone.”

“I don’t know where to find any chloroform—it’s not anything a body’d be carrying with him.”

“Ask around. If we can’t get that, we’ll have to use something, and whiskey’s not much of an answer. As small as he is, enough to put him out will give him alcohol poisoning.”

“I’ll see what I can find You want his mother in here, don’t you?”

“No. I want you here to help me. I want you to see what it’s like, and maybe you’ll understand why I can’t do it anymore,”

The very thought made her sick, but she nodded. “I’ll do what I can for you. But Abby—”

“I don’t want to look at that woman again in this life.”

“You’ve got to tell her.”

“I’m going to let you do it. I already told her it was gangrene, and I don’t think she cared. All she could say was she probably should’ve paid more attention when it happened.”

“I don’t know what to say to her.”

“I had to say it a thousand times to somebody— you can say it once.”

“All right. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Do you need anything else?”

“Not for this. Ask her to boil water, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“You’re being hard on her, Spence.”

“Any woman who tells her kids she’s giving them away doesn’t deserve to have any. I don’t care how poor she is, she had no right to say something like that to Nate. And don’t get started on that, Laura, because I don’t want to even talk about it I’m just damned mad.”

Leaning his head against the cold metal canopy frame, he closed his eyes, thinking God had led him to the promised land, only to show him hell again. He could hear Laura outside, explaining, “If the leg doesn’t come off, he’s going to die, Abby. He may, anyway. Why didn’t you say something sooner, when Spence could have done something else?”

“It happened like I told it,” the woman maintained stubbornly. “Just like I told it.”

“But not when you said it did.”

“To tell the truth, I didn’t know when it happened. I’d been feeling bad, and Nate was looking after the kids. It was him that tied it up, I guess.”

“Oh, no, you don’t, Abigail Daniels! You’re not shifting responsibility to a five-year-old child!” Laura told her hotly. “It’s just not right, and you know it. I don’t care how bad things are for you; God gave you those kids to raise, and you’re supposed to do it”

“It ain’t like that. You just don’t know what it’s like bein’ poor like me.”

“I’ve probably been poorer than you,” Laura snapped. “But rather than dispute over that, I’ve got to find some chloroform so that man in there can do something he despises, and it’s because you didn’t take care of that child! You’re going to have a boy hobbling around on one leg, Abby—and if you don’t want him, I do!”

It took a few moments for the words to sink into Spence’s consciousness. What the hell was she talking about? He had enough on his plate without adding to it.

“I want my boy, Mrs. Hardin! I want all of ‘em— but you tell me how I’m supposed to feed ‘em!” Abigail shouted after Laura. “Does God want me to watch ‘em starve?”

He couldn’t hear his wife’s answer. He straightened up and shrugged his shoulders, trying to ease the tension in them, before he crawled closer to Jimmy Daniels. Unable to do anything else at the moment, he lay down next to the boy and held the hot little body, offering what comfort he could.

He must’ve dozed, because the next thing he knew, Laura was telling him, “Aside from whiskey, all I could find was some peyote.”

“Peyote?” he mumbled, rousing.

Behind her, the half-breed Crow guide hovered. “Cheyenne get peyote from Comanche. Peyote heap good medicine.”

“He can talk, Spence. He says it comes from a cactus.”

“I know what it is.”

“Peyote make dream.”

“I don’t think he had much contact with the white side of his family,” Laura offered. “But he can speak, and he thinks the stuff will help.”

“You don’t make much of an interpreter.” Opening his formulary, Spence thumbed through the index. He probably wouldn’t find it under peyote. If it was in here anywhere, it’d be listed in Latin. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “
‘Mescal A potent intoxicant, capable of producing inebriation and hallucinations.’
I
don’t have any idea of a dosage, but I’m willing to give it a try. God knows I don’t have much else to use. I’ll have to have a medium for delivery, and I’ll have to give a little at a time until I know what its effect is.”

In the end, he used a mixture of medicinal alcohol and water, steeping the crushed buttons in it, reasoning it was better than using mineral oil. He didn’t want any oil getting into the kid’s lungs if he vomited the peyote up.

Since the kid was almost unconscious anyway, he used the mixture sparingly. When he finally took his surgical kit from the bag and unrolled it, Laura flinched. Closing his eyes briefly, Spence prayed silently, then turned his attention to the boy’s leg. “I want you to get his arms,” he told her. “I’m going to tourniquet the leg, and then I’ll hold my end down. If he jerks, hold on. I want a clean incision before I start sawing.”

Jimmy Daniels didn’t respond when the catlin knife cut through his skin. White-faced, Laura watched from above the child as Spence pulled back the skin just above the knee, then sliced open the muscle to expose the bone, to scrape it clean where he intended to saw. The sound of the surgical saw cutting through bone made her almost sick, but at least it didn’t last long. It seemed as if he’d just gotten started when he was tying off blood vessels with silk thread. He filed the bone stump nearly smooth, then pulled the skin flap over it and closed it with neat stitches. When he finally sat back on his heels, she realized her dress was wet with her own sweat.

“That’s it,” he said. “I’ll need to dispose of the severed limb and clean up some of the mess, but whether he pulls through or not, it’s not going to be gangrene that kills him. I got all of it off.”

‘Then he’ll make it.”

“Not necessarily. There’s still the danger of blood poisoning, but I’d say his chances are considerably improved right now.” Looking across the still little body, he met her eyes for a moment. They were brimming with tears. “It’s all right,” he said quietly. “You need to go on and get Jessie. She doesn’t need to be up all night.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to stay here for a while and see what I can do about his fever. It’ll be a couple of hours before I can expect any kind of improvement, anyway, but I’ll feel
better if I can get his temperature down.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“You’re welcome. I’ll try not to wake you when I climb into bed.”

He sat with Jimmy Daniels most of the night and it wasn’t until the gray light of dawn crept through the open canvas that he decided it was safe to leave. While the boy hadn’t regained consciousness, his fever had come down enough for him to rest peacefully, and the bleeding was now minimal.

Bone-tired, he crawled into the back of the Conestoga and crept on his hands and knees, trying to keep from waking Laura or the baby. They were asleep together, Laura’s body curved around Jessie’s. He didn’t move for a moment; he just stared at their faces, thinking they had to be the two most beautiful females in the world. Rather than disturb them, he decided to sit up a while longer. She’d have to drive while he slept later.

As he was about to crawl back out, he felt something crackle under one knee, and he realized he was crushing her journal. Taking it with him to smooth the pages out, he tried to make out the words of her last entry, but it was still too dark. Curious as to what she’d written in all those pages, he found the lantern and lit it.

June 19, 1866. Beneath the date, she’d chronicled the usual things, all the way down to a description of supper. But it was the last paragraph that caught his attention.

Somehow all of her spoken words on the subject had not moved him, but there was no denying the effect of the lines she’d written on this page. They’d never been meant for his eyes, something that made them even more powerful, because he knew they’d been written from her heart.

As the stars faded into the grayness above the rich, warm hues of dawn, he closed the book and crept to bed, where he eased his body onto the mattress behind hers and reached his arm around her to hold her close. “I love you,” he whispered.

She stirred, then turned over to face him. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. I just read your journal.”

“Oh. I wasn’t writing it for you to find, but it’s the truth, anyway. I wanted Jessie and Josh to know the kind of man you are.” She yawned sleepily, then asked, “What time is it, anyway?”

“Sun’s coming up.”

“How is Jimmy?”

“It’s too soon to tell, but I’m hoping he’ll make it. I cut it high enough to get all of the gangrene, and his fever was down some by the time I left. Not normal, but down.” Brushing her tangled hair with his fingertips, he murmured, “Where did you learn to write like that?”

“Mama. But she was better at it. She didn’t have much education either, but she had a way with words.”

Rolling onto his back, he stared up at the metal supporting the canvas. “I feel pretty good about his chances. I liked what you said to his mother, too.”

“I was just plain mad at her, Spence. It’s one thing to make a mistake, but when it’s made worse by not admitting it, that’s something I can’t excuse. When I saw that leg, I was sick to my stomach. I don’t know how you did it—I honestly don’t.”

“It was a pretty clean cut,” he admitted. “But I ought to be good at it—God knows, I’ve had enough practice.”

“It’s more than practice. Whether you want to admit it or not, it’s a gift.”

“That’s what you wrote in your journal.”

“Well, it is.”

“Michelangelo, huh?”

“Well, he was the first painter who came to my mind. I could just as easily have said da Vinci.”

“Now
that
would have been the ultimate compliment,” he murmured.

“If my words impressed you so much, what are you going to do about them?”

“I don’t know—maybe read your mother’s journals. I’d like to know where you come up with some of the things you say. I figure maybe there’s something in them that’ll tell me.”

“I don’t think like her, Spence—Mama was more practical than I am.”

“Now that’s impossible. You don’t have a foolish notion in that steel-trap mind of yours.”

“But you’re going to think it over, aren’t you? You know I wrote the truth.”

“I’m going to think it over, but I can’t promise anything. All I know is I’m glad I knew what to do. I looked at him, and I thought he could’ve been Josh.”

“They’re both four.”

“If I didn’t think I’d be biting off a lot of trouble, I’d take them, you know.”

“Who?”

“Nate and Jimmy.”

“Then who’d take care of Frankie?”

“Laura, I’m not opening an orphanage. You know, you’re just like Bingham—every stray dog that came to Willowood wound up staying.”

“Well, maybe if Abby had some money, she’d do better.”

“Maybe. If I’ve got anything left by the time we get to Sacramento, I’m giving it to her,” he decided. “God, I’m tired.”

“I’m not—not since you woke me up.” Turning to face him, she ran a fingertip along the dark shadow on his jaw. “There’s something real masculine about a man right before he shaves,” she murmured.

“The baby’s going to wake up.”

Her fingertip moved to tickle his ear. “Mrs. Wilson couldn’t get her settled down, so I just finished feeding her less than an hour ago, and she took a lot of milk. But—I guess if you’re tired, I might as well get up.”

“Not on your life—you know where all that teasing leads, don’t you?” he whispered, rolling her onto her back. “I don’t like teases who don’t pay up, Mrs. Hardin.”

Her arms reached for his neck. “Well, you don’t have to worry,” she assured him softly. “I’m a woman who likes to settle things right.”

“W
ell, it’s really something, isn’t it? I think the water’s even prettier out here than at home,” Laura observed.

Standing on the observation hill, Spence followed her gaze, taking in the wide expanse of the bay, then the city below. “It’s about as pretty a place as I’ve seen,” he agreed. As he hoisted Jessie to sit on his shoulders, she grabbed his hair and chortled. “What do you think from up there, Jess? Do you want to settle in for a while?”

“She wants to be anywhere up high. But I thought you’d want to go back to Georgia.”

“I don’t know as I’d want to spend another day in a damned wagon, let alone cross the country again. But if you’ve got your heart set on someplace else, I’m willing to listen.”

“We just got here,” she pointed out. “We don’t know anything about San Francisco except that it’s big and the bay’s beautiful. What are you going to do if Josh isn’t here?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, sobering. “Keep looking, I guess. If he’s not here, I’m at a dead end, unless I want to hire Pinkerton again.” Looking out over the water to where the azure sky met the bay, he felt almost at peace. All he needed to complete his life was his son. “Come on,” he said, putting an arm around Laura’s shoulders. “We’ve got to find a place to stay for the night. When we get up tomorrow, we’ll start looking for Ross.”