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When they were finished at last, the sun lay low on the horizon and the late winter atmosphere had turned chill once again. A few muffled voices could be heard in the outside waiting room, where friends had gathered to keep watch over one of their own.
Letty was the first to rise, slowly and creakily, arching the muscles of her stiffened back and dragging in air through a huge yawn that nearly dislocated her jaws. Exhausted. She was so exhausted she almost hadn’t realized just how much time this surgery had taken, nor how cramped and fatigued and drained of energy she would be afterward. She stood, looking down with pride at her handiwork.
“I think he’ll do all right,” she said softly.
Hannah, who had also climbed to her feet, slipped one arm around her sister’s waist, and Letitia swayed against her. “I’m sure he will, hon. I cannot believe what I just watched you do—the care, and the precision... You were—amazing!” Her blue eyes shone with new respect.
A second small dose of the narcotic, uncorked and tipped into a glass, had been administered partway through, to ensure continued insensibility. The mashed and mangled bullet, located with great relief after a good deal of cautious probing, lay clinking in a metal basin. A welter of cotton cloths used during surgery lay scattered and crumpled upon the floor.
Given their appearance, both girls might have been the victims of some bloodletting human sacrifice, with their garments smeared and wrinkled and stained deep scarlet and made pungent by the scent of carbolic acid, their hair mussed and their faces flushed. Despite all this, and their utter, overwhelming weariness, they grinned at each other.
“I feel as if I’ve been grinding wheat into flour the whole livelong day,” Letty confided. “And yet I—I’m over the moon with happiness and just about busting my buttons with satisfaction!”
Gabriel lay unconscious and unknowing, with his wound cleaned and disinfected, the gaping hole deftly stitched together, padded by gauze, and wrapped by the yards of sheeting commonly applied as bandages. His right arm was wrapped as well, to keep movem
ent at a minimum, and sheltered by a sling.
A mere careful tug removed both low boots before Letty gently pulled a blanket up to cover the body she had worked over for so long.
It was while Hannah was easing a pillow under his tousled head that he actually opened his bleary eyes and saw her. He blinked once or twice; recognition came slowly. He scrunched his dry mouth into some vaguely viable shape and managed to whisper a few husky words.
“H’lo—Sunshine. How are—my—cats—?”
Chapter Sixteen
“LAWRENCE POPE. POOR devil.”
“Yeah, who woulda thunk it, huh? Well...” Gabriel reconsidered. “He’d already lost so much. Reckon he figured he didn’t have anywhere else to go. He just didn’t care any more.”
Paul, steadily surveying his friend, lifted one brow. “Sam told me our bandit yelled somethin’ at you, through the coach window.”
“He did. He did. Told me his next bullet was for me, and he hoped I’d die of it.”
“Uhhh.” A lawman’s grunt. “Harsh words.”
Gabriel might have shrugged one shoulder, in his habitual gesture, had it not been bandaged and secured within an inch of its life. “He blamed me for the deaths of his wife and child, Paul. He claimed it was my fault. Dunno...maybe he’s right.”
“No, he ain’t right, so stop thinkin’ that way. You know you did the best you could for Marcella and the baby. Told me yourself that they waited too long to send for you.”
“That’s so. Yeah, that’s so. Still, it’s a tragedy...”
Two days had passed since the stagecoach’s wild gallop into town. It was the most excitement any Turnabout resident had experienced in months of routine existence, and gossip still ran rife, with this the main topic of conversation. Sam, still mourning the loss of his best hat, had played a superhuman part in the saga of bringing down the notorious bandit, as had Elander Ward, wounded in the line of duty. Each was certain he had delivered the killing shot that had saved the day. Both were being treated to drinks and praise.
Speaking of praise, Gabriel had become a newly lionized hero to the general public. Out in the streets, anyway; Letitia Barclay, that self-appointed guardian of the sickroom, was playing martinet. She had allowed only a select few visitors in to see the injured man and shooed everyone else away, claiming a need for peace and quiet and recuperation. What did that matter, groused the clamoring hordes, when all they wanted to do was re-live their luminary’s experience?
Gabe allowed his medico to unwrap, check, and rewrap the healing hole in his chest, without much protest other than an occasional yelp of discomfort. When it came to relief of bodily needs, however, he called for reinforcements from amongst his friends.
“You just tell ole Ben he can hike his tail over here and help me out to the privy,” the doctor had grunted. “I ain’t hurt near bad enough to ask a lady to tag along.”
Once that first trip was made, its patient moving haltingly and voicing complaints with every step, he had insisted upon being transferred to the cot in his back room, next to the kitchen.
“Never realized how hard and slippery that examinin’ table is until I had to spend a night on it. I need to rest comfortable, or I’ll never get back on my feet again.”
“Anything else, Your Highness?” Letty had inquired coldly.
“Yeah.” Gabe had managed the weak semblance of a grin. “Where’s that bourbon I asked for?”
So, now, with the doctor settled in his own room, with the shades of both windows lowered halfway for privacy but with one pane open a few inches for fresh air, he was entertaining one of the limited callers allowed into his inner sanctum. Paul had arrived, on the mid-morning of this frosty Sunday, to check on the invalid’s condition and update him on the details of the attack that had been pieced together.
