Calder Brand - Janet Dailey Page 0,48

and tall, his rangy body still filling out. Above the bloodstained white bandage that wrapped his head, his dark hair clung damply to his scalp. A thin, scraggly beard hid his jawline. His eyes were closed.

An unaccustomed tenderness surged in her—maybe because he reminded her of a boy whose life had crossed hers for a brief time—a boy she might have loved if things had ended differently. Maybe there was a girl waiting for this young man somewhere—a girl who loved him the way she’d almost loved Joe Dollarhide.

Heaven help her, she had to save him.

She climbed down from the chair and ran to fetch the things she needed—Uncle Harlan’s medical bag, a box of wrappings, a clean sheet, and one of the long, white aprons the doctor had worn for surgery. Adding some wood to the coals in the stove, she coaxed them to a blaze, then set a shallow pan on the stove and dropped a scalpel and forceps in two different sizes into the water to boil.

Laying the robe aside, she tied back her hair, donned the apron over her nightgown, rolled up her sleeves, scrubbed her hands in a basin, and with a silent prayer, set to work.

First, she checked the head wound by lifting the edge of the bandage. It appeared to be a crease above the left ear. For now, the bloodstained wrap was holding. She could clean it and replace the dressing later. The other injuries were more urgent.

“Can you hear me?” she asked, wishing she’d thought to ask Rusty the cowboy’s name.

He didn’t answer. His eyes remained closed, his breathing ragged. She continued speaking to him as if he could hear. “I’m going to cut back your shirt and underwear and then examine your wounds. It’s bound to hurt some, but that can’t be helped. I’ll be as gentle as I can.”

After cutting away his ruined shirt and the cotton undershirt beneath it, she used the larger forceps to peel back the blood-caked dressing on his shoulder. He’d been shot from behind. She could see where the bullet had exited just below the collarbone. He groaned as she rolled him partway onto his side to find the entrance wound above the shoulder blade. A lucky shot. Though the wound was still oozing, it would likely heal in time. Hands moving swiftly, she replaced the dressing on both sides to stanch the blood. The remaining wound, on the left side, two finger-breadths below the rib cage, was the critical one—the one that would kill him if she failed.

It had been a hard call, deciding whether to check the lesser wounds first, but this one was going to take time. She hadn’t wanted anything else to go wrong before she was finished.

A quiver passed through him as she lifted away the blood-soaked dressing and saw the ugly hole, still bleeding like a well. Sarah stifled a gasp. If the bullet had struck a vital organ, he wouldn’t have lived long enough to get here, she told herself. But he could still die from blood loss, or from infection or lead poisoning if she couldn’t get the bullet out.

Unfolding the sheet, she laid it along his left side and worked it partway under him to cover the dirty blanket. In the medical kit was a knife with a leather sheath. Sarah removed the sheath, leaving the knife behind.

“Listen, if you can hear me,” she said, “we’ve got to get that bullet out of you. I’m going to put something between your teeth to bite on when the pain gets bad.” She leaned over him, opened his mouth slightly, and laid the knife sheath between his jaws. She’d half expected him to resist, but he accepted it. Maybe he really could hear her.

“All right. Wish me luck. Here goes.” Taking the smaller and finer of the two forceps, she worked the tip into the wound and began to probe for the bullet.

* * *

Joe had been drifting in a red haze of pain, aware but not awake. The womanly voice drifted in and out of his hearing, soothing and strangely familiar. But he was too far below the surface to open his eyes, to speak, or even to move.

The leather between his teeth tasted salty and felt strange. He wasn’t sure what it was for—the woman must’ve told him, but the words hadn’t penetrated his foggy mind. He was testing the edge with his tongue when the pain struck, stabbing into him like a red-hot poker