A Man with a Past by Mary Connealy

TWENTY-THREE

Molly heard thundering hooves. Everything about the sound of that horse coming at full speed shouted desperation to her.

She rushed for the back door and stepped out just as Kevin slammed the door open to the ramrod’s house. She noticed he had his gun in hand but wasn’t aiming anywhere. Not yet.

The bunkhouse door flung open and five armed men stepped out, one of them Andy.

A single man came racing in on horseback and charged straight for Molly.

“It’s Wyatt. He’s been shot.” The man reined his horse to such a sudden stop, the animal reared up, fighting the tight hold. The man leapt off a second after the horse had four legs on the ground.

Molly put her hand over her belly. It was too much like home. All the trouble. Ma’s trouble with Pa. Pa coming home hurt from his night rides. Always something terrible. Why was there no peace in the world? And Wyatt? Not Wyatt. He was so young and strong, and he’d been so nice to her, well, a few times.

Falcon had been shot and was left with amnesia.

Win and then Kevin had been shot, and two men after him ended up dead. That should have ended it.

Now Wyatt.

But she’d lived through the Civil War in Kansas. Honestly, how did folks live who didn’t have to fight for their lives every day?

“Miss Cheyenne said to get ready for him. Clear the kitchen table, boil water, whatever you need to do.”

“Talk while I work.” Molly clamped down hard on the riot of fear twisting her gut. Dear Father in heaven, I am no doctor. You know that. I know that, and they all know that, and yet they are expecting me to deal with a gunshot. Guide my hands, Father.

She forced herself to move, to race against the time of Wyatt’s arrival so she could begin helping him right quick. “Tell me what you know. Where’s the wound? How is Wyatt? How far are they?”

“The bullet went clear through his shoulder. Miss Cheyenne only sent me running ahead a few minutes ago. They’ll be here right away.” The man darted out.

She thought of how it was with Ma. Molly had no business sewing up her ma. It all terrified her witless. Her hands were unsteady. Her heart hurt too much. She’d heard somewhere that a person with too much connection shouldn’t doctor another, maybe small things like taking a few stitches, or tending a relative when they were feverish. But serious doctoring, she knew she shouldn’t. It was said that with someone you knew and loved, you were too apt to fear the worst, and it was too easy to ignore what seemed like small complaints because you were used to listening to them complain.

The two ends of doctoring, caring too much and not taking them seriously.

Just because Wyatt was her half brother’s half brother didn’t mean she was connected to him. Nor did it matter if she was. She had to do this.

The table had a few things on it. A salt cellar and pepper grinder. A dish of butter and a jar of jelly. She quickly cleared them away. Molly ran to a closet with some folded fabric and set it on the table. She wanted to tear some of it into bandages, but that could wait. Cheyenne would be here this time. She might be able to do some of this work, know where things were.

Molly put three pots on the stove. One large, two small. One small to heat vinegar and herbs to clean the wound. The second was water, to get the first batch hot faster. The third was a big pot of water so they could have all the clean water they needed. There were hot water wells on the stove, too, but Molly wanted to have plenty.

She pulled one long piece of fabric over the table, then went to the small corner of a cupboard where she’d placed all the supplies she’d used when Win was shot. She wanted them close to hand rather than spend time ransacking the house when trouble came again.

As she concocted her vinegar rinse, she thought of Wyatt and prayed over and over again. Dear Father in heaven, guide my hands. Steady my hands. Steady my mind and heart.

Wyatt had been so angry that first day at the train station. Not one bit happy to see any of them, yet he’d let them move right in, fed them, treated them decent. And now he’d been shot, and it had to all be tied in with this mess involving Clovis Hunt’s will.

She heard more thundering hooves. They wouldn’t be bringing him that fast. She rushed to the back door to see another rider coming into the yard. And beyond that, a fair distance, she saw six more riders. She recognized Cheyenne because she favored a beautiful white horse, and that critter was there.

Swallowing hard, she didn’t see anyone who looked shot.

Seeming to come an inch at a time, they rode into the yard. They came straight to the back door, and Molly could finally see Wyatt.

Fighting the need to cry, she rushed down just as Falcon firmly took her arm. “We need to lift him, Miss Molly. We’ll turn him over to your doctorin’ hands as soon as we get him inside.”

Cheyenne went to the offside across Wyatt’s unmoving body from Falcon. Then Falcon said, “Vincent, get over here.”

A strapping young man, who Molly assumed was from the Hawkins Ranch, rushed over.

“Stand there where Cheyenne is.”

“Falcon, I’m—”

“He’s heavy, Cheyenne.” Falcon’s voice snapped like a bullwhip. “We don’t have time for your feelings to be hurt. Let Vince in there.”

Frowning, Cheyenne did as she was told.

Molly knew he was heavy, and they didn’t have time for Cheyenne to want to help and fail.

Still, to see Falcon back Cheyenne off. It took Molly a minute to notice her jaw was gaped open.

She shoved aside the shock and closed her mouth about the same time Falcon and Vince hauled an unconscious Wyatt into the kitchen.

Not wasting a second, Molly said, “Falcon, cut his shirt away.”

Leaving the cutting to Falcon, she rushed to the stove, ladled boiling water into a basin that she had ready, and brought it to Wyatt’s side as Falcon finished. She knew he carried a razor-sharp knife all the time, and he seemed well able to use it.

Wyatt was stripped to the waist. Cheyenne stood across from her.

Molly talked to her, recognizing the love and terror in Cheyenne’s expression. “Your cowpoke said the bullet went all the way through.”

Bathing the blood away, Molly saw the neat round hole. It made her sick that something so damaging could be so small.

Kevin came running in, Win a step behind him. “What happened?”

Falcon began talking, but Molly ignored him to pay attention to what she was doing. She worked in silent urgency to clean the wound in Wyatt’s chest. No bullet, thank the good Lord. Cutting a bullet out of someone was hard, and Molly had no fine tools to make it less brutal.

Cheyenne didn’t so much as spare the talking men a glance.

Molly lost track of the time, but it felt like she was hours cleaning the wound. When she was satisfied the wound was as clean as she could make it, she looked Cheyenne in the eye. “Get me the funnel I set beside the stove, and there is a pan of vinegar I added healing herbs to. It’s going to sting like blue blazes, but I was taught vinegar has healing properties. I pulled it off to cool a bit after it boiled, but it’s still steaming hot, and that’s a good thing.”

Cheyenne was back with both in seconds.

Molly placed the funnel over the wound, explaining as she set it in place. “I want to try and flush the wound out as well as possible. When someone is shot through a shirt like this, there are threads that go into the wound. I’ve picked out anything I could find, but it’s almost impossible to get it all. A thread or bit of dirt, anything left in the wound can cause an infection.”

Without speaking, Cheyenne said, “I’ll hold the funnel. You handle the vinegar.”

Molly let Cheyenne take it, very careful to keep it centered over the wound and pressed hard against Wyatt’s chest.

“I doubt my brew will go in as deeply as I’d wish. It’ll flush the wound a bit, then flow all over.”

Looking up, she saw Win. It seemed as if she were ready and willing to help.

“Get towels.” Molly’s hands were full, but she nodded her head in the right direction. “I gathered a stack over there. Use them to collect the vinegar as best you can. No sense making a terrible mess.”

Win came with the towels.

Now came the worst of what Molly would do.

Lifting the pan of boiled vinegar, she poured the thinnest stream she could manage through the funnel.

Wyatt, unconscious until now—thank heaven for that—roared. His body surged until he nearly sat up.

“Kevin.” Molly’s single word brought Falcon and Kevin to the table. They’d finished their talking and been standing ready. “Hold him. I think his collarbone is broken. Everything I do is going to hurt him worse than just a bullet wound would. You have to hold him still.”

Falcon, beside Molly, shoved both hands against Wyatt’s chest and held him down on the table. Kevin, beside Cheyenne, threw his weight over Wyatt’s legs.

Cheyenne got the funnel back in place. Molly went back to pouring.

A scream, deep and awful to hear, erupted from Wyatt’s throat.

Molly glanced up, expecting Cheyenne to have murder in her eyes for Molly after hurting her brother this way. Instead, Cheyenne only focused on holding that funnel, tears raining down without a sob to go with them.

Molly finished flushing the wound. They rolled him over, and she repeated her treatment on the back.

“I’m not as worried about the back. You said the bullet hit him in the front, so it would shove threads along with it. The back, where the bullet exited his body, has a better chance of being clear of trouble.”

Still, she flushed the wound carefully, taking as much time as she felt the job needed.

The day was wearing down by the time she’d bandaged him. Molly straightened from the doctoring, and her back kicked up such a fuss, she began to fall.

Falcon caught her and held her until she was steady.

“Thank you.”

“Welcome, little sister.”

She’d’ve smiled if she had one ounce of good humor in her anywhere. She did give him a nod.

“We need to keep at least two people with him so he doesn’t roll off. I don’t want him up in his room yet. And I don’t want his left arm to move. We’ll have to splint it somehow. This hard surface is a better place for him until he regains consciousness. And besides, I can keep an eye on him better here. Hopefully only for a couple of hours. We can probably boot him off there in time for supper.”

Wyatt was lifted above the messy table. A new cloth was put down, and they returned him to lying on it. Cheyenne straightened away from Wyatt, once he was settled again. “How do you know all this, Molly?”

Shaking her head, Molly said, “Learned in a hard school. A doctor should know more, maybe have medicine I don’t, but it seems I’m all you have. That’s how it was when I was back in Kansas, too. So I learned.”

Cheyenne pulled a chair over to the table. Win sat down on the other side of Wyatt. Molly wanted to protest, afraid the two women weren’t strong enough if Wyatt got to thrashing. Before she could speak, Kevin sat by Win, and Falcon sat at Cheyenne’s side.

Molly gave her back a few minutes to stop jabbing at her, then she began cleaning her ruined kitchen.

A woman’s work was never done around here.

“Now tell us who shot him,” Win said.

Falcon and Cheyenne exchanged a furious look and started talking.