The sergeant shook his head. “Not you. I followed you when we was dodging Sherman in the war. You’d fight a twenty-gun man-of-war with a tug boat and still come out ahead.”
The doctor finally reached them. Anna’s brother pushed his way forward. “If you were on the stage, where are the others? My sister should have been with the stage, unless she missed her connection. I swear, if there was a dog in the road, she’d stop to help it even if it meant missing the stage.” When both men just stared at him, the doctor added, “Was there trouble? Is anyone hurt?”
Cunningham took the lead. “Ranger Wynn McCord, this is Doctor Devin Woodward. You’ll have to excuse his manners—he’s worried about his sister.”
Wynn faced Dr. Woodward. “Your sister is all right, sir.” He turned back to his friend. “We were attacked by what looked like Thorn and about a dozen men, but we managed to make it to the station just as the rain hit.” Wynn met the sergeant’s gaze and they both knew they’d talk details later when they were alone.
“Oh, my God,” Dr. Woodward yelled. “Was my sister hurt? If she’s back at the station in pain, I’ll hold someone accountable. We have to hurry!”
“No.” Wynn turned back to the doc. “She’s asleep right now. I brought her with me when I escaped in the rain. I figured her chances would be better than at the station once the rain stopped. We followed the stream behind the station for a few miles, then climbed over those hills.”
Devin Woodward didn’t look like he believed the Ranger.
McCord added, “She’s quite a little soldier.”
“You let her leave with you!” Dr. Woodward turned his anger on the Ranger. “You dragged a woman out in a storm and across those hills? Good God, man, you could have killed her.”
McCord’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t drag her anywhere. Your sister is a strong woman who knows her own mind.”
“My sister is an idiot. If she’d had any brains, she would have married and not taken on nursing as her cause. She’s wasted her youth running from battle to battle during the war, and now will probably be my burden to bear for the rest of her life.”
McCord thought of hitting the doc. One good punch should put him out for a while. Anna looked to be almost in her thirties and Woodward appeared to be just past twenty. He’d been too young to fight. He couldn’t know how many men lived because of nurses who worked round the clock in roofless field hospitals and old barns turned into surgery stations. The doctors might have done the cutting and the patching, but it had been the nurses who bandaged and fought fevers and held men as they faced death.
Wynn looked toward the cottonwood and silently swore.
Anna, her back straight and his coat folded over her arm, walked slowly toward the men. The face that had shown such fire when she’d been mad at him, which was most of the time he’d known her, now looked stone cold, as if no emotion would ever reflect in her features. Only her eyes looked tired and sad, very sad.
“There you are!” Woodward shouted. “You had us all worried to death.” He didn’t move toward her but waited for her to join them. “I’d hoped to start setting up the infirmary today, but from the looks of you, we’ll have to put it off until tomorrow.”
McCord balled his fists. Just two punches. One to the doc’s face, leaving him unwilling to talk around a busted lip and a few missing teeth, and one to his gut to knock some of the wind out of him. Couldn’t he see that his sister had just walked through hell to get to him? Couldn’t he imagine how frightened she must have been, and how brave?
The sergeant stepped past McCord and moved to Anna. “Are you all right, ma’am? Ranger McCord told me what an ordeal you had last night and I’m surprised you’re still standing. May I be of some service to you?”
McCord saw her glance at the stripes on Dirk’s sleeve before answering, “Thank you, Sergeant. You are kind.”
Dirk Cunningham might be an old fighter, but there was enough Southern gentleman in him to know how to treat a lady. They left the doc standing in the trail as they moved to the troops still in their saddles.
“I need three good men to go with me back to the station and