finished. Over and over, she said, “You’re going to make it through this. Hang in there. You’re going to be good as new once you heal.”
Finally, when she leaned back to rest her back a moment, the sergeant placed his hand on her shoulder. “He’ll come back to you, Anna.” He barked out a laugh. “Hell, if a fine woman like you ordered me to, I’d come back from hell itself, and I reckon McCord feels the same way.”
An hour passed. Cunningham began sampling the whiskey. Clark slept on a cot in the corner, snoring away. Anna worked, with memories of a hundred hospital camps after a hundred battles floating in her mind. All of the horror she’d worked through, all the exhaustion, all of the skills she’d learned, all boiled down to this day, this time, this man.
If she could save him, all the years would be worth it.
“I’m never giving up on you, Wynn, so you might as well decide to live because I’m not letting you die,” she whispered. “I hear Rangers are made of iron. Well, you’d better be. You’re going to come out of this. Hear me good.”
Finally she finished and wrapped the wound where a bullet had dug its way across Wynn’s back. He’d lost so much blood she was surprised he was still breathing, but she could feel the slow rise and fall of his chest and the warmth of his skin against her touch.
Exhausted, she pulled a stool beside the table and leaned her face near his. “You’re going to be all right, soldier. Hang on. I’m not going to let you die.” Her fingers dug into his hair and made a fist. “I’m expecting you to come knocking on my door one day, and when you do you might as well plan on staying because I don’t think I can let you go.”
She fell asleep in the middle of a sentence, with McCord’s shallow breath brushing her cheek.
In what seemed like minutes, someone woke her to tell her breakfast was ready. It took her a minute to realize that twenty-four hours had passed since they’d brought McCord in.
Anna left her meal untouched as she walked around Wynn, checking the wound, feeling his skin for fever. Wishing he’d open his eyes.
Finally, at Cunningham’s insistence, she ate a few bites and drank a cup of tea. Clark ate everything in sight. Men took over the sergeant’s watch by the door so he could get some sleep, and the day passed in silence.
Lieutenant Dodson tapped on the open door to the office just before dark. He waited until she nodded for him to enter, then removed his hat. She had no doubt he’d heard about what had happened, probably including small details like how she’d stabbed one of the outlaws with her scissors when he’d tried to tie her hands after she’d pulled free. Hopefully Clark had left out the ways the outlaw called Luther had threatened to rape her before they killed her. The words he’d used still made her cheeks burn.
Pushing aside the memory, she stared at the pale officer her brother had said couldn’t afford to be too picky in finding a wife. That dinner her first night in camp seemed more like a hundred years ago rather than just a week.
Lieutenant Dodson began talking as if giving a speech. Anna barely followed along. The man liked to hear his own voice.
Anna didn’t say much. Dodson had been politely cold to her both times they’d met and had obviously seen her only as a possible solution to his problem. Now he seemed to look at her quite differently. He even told her he had always admired tall women who could carry themselves well. It appeared, since she’d survived a kidnapping, her value had gone up in his eyes.
The change in the lieutenant bothered Anna far more than his flattery did. She was glad when the sergeant showed up for his nightly guard duty before Dodson lied and said that she was pretty. Anna had always known she was simply plain.
She didn’t want to hear words she knew weren’t sincere; she wanted to see the way a man felt in his face, and read the truth of his compliments in a touch.
All in all, she’d been lucky: two men in her life had been blind enough to see her as beautiful. One had been young and in love with love. The other lay on the table before her. She had no doubt,