The Accidental Lawman (23 page)

Her rusty laughter echoed in the empty room.

How ironic. Hank has turned to God and I have turned away.

I love you, Amelia.

She put her hands over her ears and tried to forget all the years she’d offered up her hope and dreams in useless prayer. All the years she’d asked for guidance and trusted that God was there, watching over her, listening to her, guiding her hands and her heart.

She couldn’t trust God any more than she could trust Hank.

Sitting there on the floor, leaning against the bed, she fell into a natural sleep for the first time in days. When she finally stirred, she thought she heard her father’s voice.

Get up and dry those tears, Amelia.

She struggled to her knees, looked around Evan’s room. She didn’t recall wreaking such havoc, and yet the proof was all around her.

I’m going crazy, she thought. I’m as crazy as Fanny.

Insanity terrified her more than anything. She pushed herself to her feet, refusing to go on like this. Not another day. Not another hour.

She kept a shotgun behind the pantry door—unless
Evan had stolen that, too. She went into the pantry. The shotgun was still there.

There wasn’t a breath of air inside the house or out. She was hot and sweaty and tired of being exhausted. Sick of feeling nothing. She drew in a deep breath, lost it on a sigh. The scent of cinnamon and spices in the pantry awakened her senses. There was a bundle of dried lavender hanging from the ceiling. The aroma soothed her, quieted her.

She reached for one of the lavender-scented soaps she’d made last Christmas, pulled off the twine, carefully unwrapped the brown paper. Inhaling the heady scent, she closed her eyes and imagined soaking in a tub of cool, clear water.

She glanced down at the shotgun. It wasn’t going anywhere.

She decided that before she did anything rash, she would bathe.

N
early a week later, Hank was alone in the newspaper office, wondering just how long he was going to be able to keep putting out a paper before he had to find another source of income. He’d spent most of his savings on the building, figuring it was better to own than to rent. The Cutters held a mortgage for the balance, with interest. He could always walk away and let them take the building, but he’d be penniless.

Too soon to worry, he told himself. Best to hold on to the dream for at least a few more weeks.

He decided to take a suggestion Brand made at last Sunday’s service and turn his problems over to God. Though it wasn’t a habit, he figured he might as well turn to his newfound faith. If there ever was a time of need, this was it.

Ricardo was out delivering the latest issue of the
Glory Gazette
to the community and Hank had finally cleared enough space on his desk to prop his feet up on the corner and read his mail. There wasn’t much, so he took his time.

Feeling unsettled, he glanced out the front window. To
the naked eye, everything appeared perfectly normal on Main Street. Maybe it was just his heart that was off-kilter. Since Amelia had turned him away, nothing in his world seemed right anymore. Glory was a town with a sheriff who couldn’t wait to step down and a healer who no longer wanted to heal anyone.

The new Bible that Reverend McCormick had presented to him at his baptism sat atop everything else on the desk. Hank was beginning to find solace in the words written there. He enjoyed the writing, the pageant of characters that filled the pages, the details and richness of the words, the sojourn back to ancient times and foreign lands with exotic names like Mareshah, Hebron, Ashkelon, Bethlehem—names that conjured up wanderlust in him.

Remembering the letter in his hand, he read the first couple of lines and then sat up a bit straighter. He turned the single page toward the front window so that the light hit it just right. He wanted to be sure he hadn’t misread.

Hank dropped his feet to the floor, rummaged through his desk drawers until he found a clean sheet of vellum. His inkwell was buried beneath a pile of newsprint. He had to sharpen the nib of his fountain pen before he could begin, but he had a response to Madison James in record time. If he hurried, he’d be able to get the letter out on the next mail packet.

With any luck at all, the prospect for the new sheriff would be on his way to Glory within the next two weeks. The
only
prospect for the new sheriff. Unless Madison James was blind or had two heads, the job was his.

He took a half-dozen steps down the boardwalk when gunfire erupted inside the Silver Slipper Saloon.

Horses up and down Main Street reared back in fear and tugged at their reins. A man with a wagonload of seed bags struggled to get his team under control.

Hank noticed men running out of the saloon, hightailing it to safety. A woman on the street grabbed her child’s hand and ducked between two buildings. Within seconds there was no one visible—except him.

He ran back to the newspaper office to get the gun he kept tucked inside his desk drawer. The gun Harrison had just now chided him about not wearing.

“You are a lawman,” the storekeeper had reminded him. “You might not have a badge yet, but you should wear your gun.”

“The Perkins boys are dead,” Hank reminded him. “Besides, nothing ever happens here, remember?”

Hank grabbed the holster and gun and ran to the door. Sporadic shots rang out. A ricochet bullet pinged off a metal lamp cover down the street. The garishly painted front window of the saloon was shot out and glass exploded everywhere.

He hadn’t used his gun since the day of the shootout at Harroway House and hoped he’d never have to use it again. He made certain it was loaded, strapped on the holster, and ran out the door.

Amelia raised the shades in Evan’s room first. She hadn’t been inside since the day she’d torn it apart. Since then, she’d slowly begun to put her life back together. That was five, maybe six days ago, now. She wasn’t certain. She’d lost track of time.

The afternoon she’d contemplated ending it all, she’d soaked in a tub of cold water instead, inhaled the scent of lavender, sipped some fragrant rose hip tea and decided she could at least live another day.

After that it was another and another, one day at a time. Now here she was, ready to clean up the mess she’d made, ready to clear out her brother’s room.

She washed all the bedding and hung it on the clothesline. She swept up the broken glass. She neatly folded and stacked Evan’s clothes, then carried them out to the back porch until she could bring herself to deliver them to the Rocking e. Rebekah Ellenberg would see to it that they were given to the local Indian agent.

She remade the bed and scrubbed the floors until they shone. She washed the windows with vinegar and water.

Tomorrow she would wash the lace curtains in boiling water and hang them out to dry. She climbed on a chair and was reaching up to take them down off the rods when
she heard the sound of agitated voices out front. She leaned out of the open window and saw a crowd of at least a dozen people running up the street.

There were mostly men, but one or two bonnets bobbed and skirt hems flashed amid them. She was headed to the front room to see what might be happening when someone shouted her name and began pounding on her front door.

“Amelia! Open up! You gotta help!” It was Harrison Barker and he sounded frantic.

She dried her hands on her apron and quickened her steps. It had been almost a month since she’d opened her door willingly, days since anyone had even bothered to call.

No one had been there since she’d sent Hank away.

A glance in the hall tree mirror assured her there was no help for her appearance. At least she was no longer existing in her nightgown and she’d brushed and braided her hair. Her hand fluttered to her throat. Her top button was neatly fastened at her throat.

“Amelia! Help!”

She opened the door and faced what amounted to sheer chaos.

Six men supported a wooden plank between them, three on each side. The board served as a makeshift stretcher for a wounded, bleeding man. They carried him in feet first.

“Wait a minute!” She tried to stop them, but they were already headed for the kitchen.

The men huddled around her table, shoving and pushing the unconscious man off the board. She bounced on her toes, trying to see over their shoulders and finally she succeeded in shoving two of them far enough apart to squeeze between them.

She gasped and clung to the edge of the table to steady herself.

Hank Larson was stretched out unconscious. His right arm hung limply over the side of the table. The front of his white shirt was covered with a spreading crimson stain. There was a hole in the thigh of his trousers. It, too, was seeping blood, but not as fiercely as his chest wound.

She pulled off her apron, balled it up and shoved it at Mick, the smithy.

“Press this against his chest,” she ordered. “Lean on it to stop the bleeding.”

“He’s leaking like a stuck pig.” Mick pressed down so hard Amelia feared the huge man might break Hank’s ribs.

“Not that hard.” She shoved him away and placed her hands over the apron. Everything around her slowed to the thready tempo of Hank’s weakened heartbeat. The men’s voices faded away as she stared down at Hank. Oddly, she noticed his lashes were surprisingly lush for a man. His face was smooth shaven. His lips—

She forced herself to concentrate.

“What happened?” She was afraid to lift the apron and look at the wound, yet she needed to determine the extent of his injuries.

The blacksmith explained, “Silas Jones rode through town and walked into the Silver Slipper. He was wearing a disguise, but the ranch hands from the Rocking e were in town and one of them recognized him. He told the barkeep to send for Larson. Jones musta figured out they were on to him and when somebody tried to stop him from walking out, he drew his gun and started shooting. He had a roomful of patrons penned in.”

A cowhand Amelia didn’t recognize interrupted.

“A couple men was winged, but nothing this bad. The sheriff musta heard the gunshots because he came busting through the door. He surprised Silas. Hit ’im, too, but Silas got off two shots after he hit the ground and Sheriff Larson went down. After that, just about ever’ man in the place jumped up and filled Silas with lead.”

“That’s the last of the Perkins Gang,” someone said.

Amelia looked up, realized her front room was jammed with people.

She turned to Harrison. “Get everyone out of here, please.”

“So, are you going to help him?”

Her hands were shaking. So were her knees, truth be told. She’d refused to nurse anyone since she returned from Harroway House and the condemnation in Harrison’s tone was more than evident.

Shortly after Evan’s death, folks continually knocked at her door and she’d refused to answer. Eventually, word must have gotten out that she was no longer doctoring, for folks stopped coming to fetch her.

Now they wanted her to save the man who had killed her brother.

If I still believed in God, I’d think He was playing a cruel joke.

Carefully avoiding Hank’s face, her gaze drifted to the cuffs of his white shirt. There were ink stains beneath the bloodstains. Ink stains on his fingers, too. She thought of those first few times she’d seen him, talked to him.

I’m a writer, not a lawman.

He’d come to Glory following a dream. Moved to
Texas to leave behind all his dark memories and start over. Now this place had brought him down.

There’s no surgeon nearby? No
real
doctor?

He’d asked her that once, doubted her capabilities.

God led me to you, Amelia.

She looked around at the faces in the crowd, friends, neighbors, strangers she hadn’t met. They were all looking to her for help, looking to her to save Hank.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she told them, “but I can’t promise you anything.”

Judging by the amount of blood on Hank’s shirt, the table, the apron, and now her hands, he wasn’t long for this world anyway.

Harrison cleared the room and left. Amelia noticed only Laura Foster remained. Dressed in another of her fine gowns, her curly blond hair was piled high into a cascade of perfectly coiled ringlets. A thick strand of pearls lay against her throat.

The lovely widow refused to leave. She volunteered her services, rolled up her sleeves, covered her gown with an apron she’d grabbed off a hook inside the pantry. She stoked the fire in the stove to boil water. She did it without being asked.

Amelia stared at Hank. She’d never treated anyone without praying first, never picked up an instrument or stitched a wound closed, never even swabbed a cut with tincture without calling on God for His blessings and His guidance.

I refuse to believe in a God who doesn’t play fair.

Sophronia’s words came to her. Amelia hadn’t understood them that day. She did now. She understood them all too well.

She refused to become a hypocrite. She wasn’t about to pray if she couldn’t find it in her heart to believe.

She’d never felt so utterly lost or alone as she did in that moment.

Coldly, clinically, she began to inspect the bullet wound between Hank’s shoulder and lung.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Laura moved to her side and stared down at the wound.

“It’s bad. It could be worse. At least there’s no air bubbling up out of the hole. The bullet missed the lung.” Amelia glanced up at Laura, met the widow’s blue eyes. “You aren’t squeamish, I see.”

“Where I come from, I couldn’t afford to be,” Laura said.

Amelia had always figured Laura Foster for a wealthy, pampered city gal who’d inherited or married well or both. She’d assumed the boardinghouse in Glory was merely a diversion for a woman with too much time and money on her hands, a woman content to take in boarders and play hostess until the right man came along. With Laura’s beauty, Amelia had thought that wouldn’t take long, but if the rumors were true, Laura had turned down countless proposals since she moved to town.

Amelia bound the hole in Hank’s leg, needing to focus on the bullet wound in his chest. She couldn’t allow herself to think of the man beneath her hands as Hank Larson. She couldn’t think of him as anything but torn flesh and blood. She couldn’t dwell on the fact that the bullet had come so close to his heart, or that he had killed her brother, or that he was the man who had professed to love her. Right now, he was a patient, nothing more.

She swabbed the purpled flesh around the chest wound and instructed Laura to act as another set of hands. The
widow found Amelia’s medical bag, opened it up and spread out her instruments, bandages, needles and catgut thread along the dry sink.

“Hold his shoulders down while I probe for the bullet,” Amelia instructed.

She glanced at Hank’s face just before she gingerly inserted her finger in the wound, afraid he might struggle against the pain.

“Hang on,” she told Laura.

Laura did as she was told and also watched Amelia’s every move. “How did you come to be a doctor?”

“I’m not a doctor. I have no degree.”

“A healer, then.”

“My father was a doctor. I worked alongside him during the war.”

“You couldn’t have been very old.”