Doc glanced around the shack to see if there was anything they could use to protect themselves from stray shots.He fully expected a hail of bullets to perforate the wood walls any second now.There was very little that could be useful.
The cot groaned, and Doc looked over his shoulder.His patient was trying to sit up.
“No…no!You can’t be doing that.”He hurried to her side and gently pushed her back down.“You’re not well enough.”
The fever was causing her to act irrationally.He needed to calm her somehow.She needed to feel a sense of confidence that help had arrived.That they were about to be saved.
He only prayed that was true.If he didn’t operate on her soon, however, none of this would matter.
“Even if it’s the sheriff, he’ll recognize me.But it might not be him at all.It could be a friend of mine, Caleb Marlowe.The man is one of the best trackers in the West.He could have organized a posse of his own to come after us.He’s a good man.The best shot in the…”
Doc realized he was talking too much in his excitement of them being rescued.His words were not doing anything to reassure her.The woman had a death grip on his hand.Her eyes were wide open and wild.And she was obviously trying to get his attention.
“What is it?”
“Where is Lucas?”
He was surprised, but only for an instant, that she would know the outlaw’s name.She’d been drifting in an out of consciousness for days.While they had been imprisoned here, Lucas’s name had been mentioned a number of times.
“Outside, trying to get himself killed, I’d say.”
“No!”
She tried to sit up again, but he stopped her.
“I know this is distressing, but you need to lie quiet.There’s nothing we can do right now.The fight is between them.We’re safe here.”Well, reasonably safe, he thought.
Gunfire started up again.A barrage of bullets was exchanged, and the shooting kept up for a long while.It was relentless.The front wall of the shack was hit a half dozen times with holes opening with a spray of dust and splinters.Doc huddled over his patient, all the while knowing that if he were killed, her chances of survival were nil.Even so, his protective instincts were driving him.
He thought suddenly of Sheila as a little girl, feverish and stubborn, refusing to stay beneath the covers while Anne laughed softly and told him their daughter had inherited every ounce of his mulishness.The memory struck with such force that, for one breath, the shack and the gunfire fell away.
Luckily, none of the bullets struck either of them, but the outlaws were not so fortunate.Over the crackle of gunfire, he heard one of them yelp in pain and curse aloud after being shot.
Doc realized that very few shots were being returned by the road agents.But they were not giving up.
“I have to stop him,” she said thickly.
“Stop who?”
“Lucas.Let me go.I have to go out there.”
Doc looked into the woman’s face and saw tears in her eyes.They filled and then ran off across her temple, disappearing into her hairline.
“Please.”She tried to sit up again, but she wasn’t strong enough.“Help me up.”
“Why are you worried about Lucas?”he asked, unable to comprehend her concern.
“He’s my son,” she whispered raggedly.
Bits of information began to arrange themselves like chess pieces in his mind.Lucas staying here in the shack constantly.The obvious discomfort as he watched Doc digging the bullet out of her shoulder.The anger over her pain and the insistence on giving her something to relieve it.His blistering words to the two road agents when he sent them off to Elkhorn for the medicine and surgical instruments.
Not guilt alone, then.Love.Fierce, frightened, desperate love.
“They’ve come for me,” she said.“Me.And I can’t let my boy die.”
“For you?”He felt like a simpleton, babbling and repeating her words.
“I’m…I’m Mrs.Fields.”
