Cole let Tanner roll gently to his back and went to wash. Susannah put the cone over his nose and mouth and Jess dripped the pungent canned liquid onto the padding. She kept a close watch on his reaction. It made him cough but it began to take effect. “Ether can be tricky, but it beats putting a patient through surgery with no anesthetic.” After a moment she said, “All right, let’s fix this.”
Susannah said a silent prayer and squeezed Tanner’s hand.
She and Jess stood on one side of the table and Cole stood on the other in front of Tanner.
Under anesthetic, his body, which had been rigid with pain, relaxed, and Cole had to steady him. Jessica selected a probe from the wheeled tray and began a careful hunt for the bullet. Susannah heard the metal tool scrape along bone and clenched her teeth.
“Damn it,” Jess swore to herself in a low voice, “where is it?” She felt her way through his right shoulder until there was a distinctly different sound. “It’s all the way up here.” She touched the point of his shoulder left of the joint. “It must have slid along the scapula until it hit the infraspinatus fossa.” Her baffled assistants took her word for it. “I don’t know how it got in at that angle. It’s not lodged in the bone, but it’s torn so much muscle. I’m going to have to open this to repair it and clean it out. Part of the shirt fabric is probably in there with the powder and what-all. Susannah, mind the ether.”
Carefully, Susannah let a few more drops of the anesthetic drip on the cone she held to Tanner’s nose and mouth, trying hard to keep her hands steady.
Jessica grabbed a scalpel and made a quick four-inch incision, exposing the damaged flesh. Blood pooled up and she tamped gauze into the wound to clear the field.
Finally, with a pair of long forceps she plucked out the chunk of lead. “Got it!”
They stared at it and then sighed. She dropped both into an enamel bowl.
“I’ll save it in case he wants to see it,” Susannah said as Jess began cleaning and repairing the wound. When at last she snipped the final suture, Susannah asked, “He’ll live?”
“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to make an incision—this will take longer to heal, and he lost a lot of blood. But he should be all right.” Jess hesitated, then added, “As long as infection doesn’t set in. I’ll keep him here with me for a while where I can watch him.” Then she began bandaging him.
Cole went to the coat tree and put his jacket back on. “Now we have to find out how this happened. And believe me, I will.”
“Shit, we’ve gotta hide out somewhere until this settles down. I didn’t expect anyone to shoot back at us.” Bert Bauer picked the seat of his pants from between his buttocks and peered over the brush he and Rush were hiding behind. The wind still howled like a crone from hell and bit through his jacket. Worse, the sky was lowering again.
Rush shook his head. “If that shot was meant for us, a blind man was holding the gun. It hit the wagon wheel. He might have done us a favor.”
“I think it’s gonna snow, too, and we can’t light a fire in here. Someone will see it and half the county will be looking for us. We don’t even have horses!”
“Shut up, Bauer, and let me think,” Rush snapped.
After shooting Grenfell, they’d slipped off into denser cover with a canopy of tree branches that kept most of the snow from hitting the forest floor. But they’d left tracks in the thin white crust that were like arrows pointing out their escape route. Suddenly the plan that had seemed so brilliantly simple turned out to be amazingly stupid.
“Anyway, more snow will help cover our tracks.” Rush hunched his shoulders to huddle deeper into his coat. Overhead, the wind thrashed the boughs of the evergreens, and the leafless branches of poplars and maples clattered like dry beans in a cigar box.
“We shoulda gotten all the money up front before we did this. How can we hang around here to arrange a meet-up now?”
“You better decide which you want more—your neck in a noose with another seventy-five bucks in your pocket, or your freedom. The way I’m seein’ it, freedom looks a hell of a lot better than jail time. And if Grenfell is dead and we get caught, we’ll swing. I’m not about to let that happen to me.”
“If you’d got him with one clean shot instead of wingin’ him, those people wouldn’t have been driving all over the countryside, cutting off our ex-cape. They’d be busy with his dead body.”
Rush turned and stared at Bauer with that cold glare of his for so long Bauer began to fear that he’d shoot him next. Finally, he said, “All right, I’m getting out of here to the one place I can think of. It’s not the best, but it’ll have to do for now. You can come along or not, it don’t make no difference to me. Unless I get sick of your whinin’.”
He turned and cut across the needle-covered forest floor, heading south. Bauer looked around at the emptiness, then took off after him.
• • •
Susannah sat at Tanner’s bedside, isolated in a corner of the back office beside a window and behind a folding hospital screen. The stove was close by and as long as they kept the fire going, they’d be warm. He was too unstable to climb the stairs, and Jessica wanted him where she could check on him. He’d emerged from the anesthetic hours ago and drifted in and out of consciousness. She’d told Susannah that the next twenty-four hours would be the critical indicator of his recovery. At one point, she’d stopped to give her a glass of water and a spoon.
She put a hand on Tanner’s forehead and looked at his bandages. “We need to get some fluids into him. That blood loss took its toll. I’ve been reading about intravenous fluid treatment for cases like this but I’m not set up for that here.”
Whenever she could, Susannah dribbled water into his mouth, a spoonful at a time. He looked downright awful—pale and weak—and she was desperately frightened for him. Tanner was always strong and active. Just last night he’d held her in his arms and made love to her with strength and tenderness and fierce urgency. Now he lay in this bed, swathed in bandages, and she didn’t know what would happen next.
She didn’t have time for regret now, but regret came to her invited or not. She wished she’d had the last few weeks to live over again. She should have handled the problem with Riley differently. Trying to do the right thing had gotten them nowhere. Well, he’d gotten part of his memory back, but that might have backfired in their faces. It was hard to think that Riley might have had something to do with this, but it was possible.
She looked out the window, which was bracketed by plain white curtains, and saw that it had begun snowing again. The light ticking of frozen flakes on the glass caught her attention. That east wind, so frigid in the winter and broiling hot in summer, blasted the back end of this building. Soon, she imagined, all commerce in town would come to a stop. She couldn’t begin to guess how Cole would drive the truck back to the house.
Josh and Wade were with Cole at the blacksmith shop next door. The three adults felt that it was too soon for them to visit Tanner, and Cole found ways to keep them occupied.
A few patients who lived close by straggled into the clinic, and Susannah heard them come and go. Sometime in the afternoon, she heard the overhead bell ring on the door out in the waiting room, and then the low rumble of Whit Gannon’s voice speaking to Jessica. Presently, she also heard the approach of Jess’s footsteps. She poked her head around the screen.
“Whit would like to ask you a few questions, Susannah.” She glanced at the sleeping Tanner. “He should be all right to leave alone for a few minutes. Cole also got you a tray from Granny Mae’s.” Just as Susannah was about to protest, Jess stopped her. “You might not be hungry but you have to keep up your strength. Tanner and the boys will need you.”
Susannah nodded and sighed. “All right.” She stood and gave Tanner an agonized look.
Jess patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll be close by in case he needs anything.”
Walking down the hall to the front, Susannah saw the sheriff waiting for her, hat in hand. He
was tall and lanky, with mostly salt–and-some-pepper hair and a luxuriant mustache that had lost its color when he was in his midthirties. Other towns might have law officers with uniforms and such, but Whit Gannon had not evolved. She thought he would have looked right at home in a sheriff’s office fifty years earlier, with his sheepskin coat, vest, badge, bandana, and gun belt. For the sake of efficiency, the county had provided him with an automobile, but he was just as likely to be seen on horseback. Today, she saw his Model T parked outside.
“Miss Susannah, ma’am,” he said. “I’m sorry to trouble you at a time like this.”
“That’s all right, Whit. If I can help, you know I will.”
He nodded. “I’ve talked to Cole and Doc Jessica about what happened, and I’ve been doing some checking on my own but I’d sure like to have more information to go on. Since the war ended, quite a few homeless drifters have been wandering the country. Now and then, one of them is bound to make trouble. Have you seen anyone lurking around your place recently?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same question all day. At first I couldn’t think of anything odd happening. But I remember that just before Christmas, Tanner and I went out with the boys to cut a tree for Christmas. Someone shot at us.”
Whit’s brows rose. “You’re sure?”
She nodded. “At first Tanner thought that someone was just out pheasant hunting. But several shots were fired after the bird was flushed out of the brush.” Absently, she toyed with the fringe on her shawl, still wracking her brain. From next door she heard the muted sound of Cole’s hammer on the anvil. Across the street, Granny Mae’s café traffic had slowed but she saw three or four people sitting at the tables.
Whit turned the brim of his hat in his hands. “Um, ma’am, this is not an easy question to ask.” Susannah’s eyes flashed back to his. “Well, it’s pretty common knowledge that when Riley learned about Tanner, he didn’t take the news too well. Is it possible that he—I mean do you think he could have anything to do with the shooting?” He glanced at the floor and shifted his weight from one hip to the other.
Susannah swallowed. What could she say? How could she express that nagging shadow of doubt she’d felt with nothing to explain or defend it? She’d seen not much more than his profile and a rifle barrel retreat into the kitchen. To make such an accusation would be horrible enough. To be wrong about it would be devastating to the family, especially after everything else they’d been through. “No, I don’t see h-how Riley could—would—”
All of this went through her mind in the blink of an eye but Whit must have sensed her hesitation. “Now, Miss Susannah, I know you want me to catch the person responsible for this. Doc Jessica says Tanner’s condition is still touch-and-go, and if the worst should happen—” He inclined his head toward the back of the clinic. Her heart dropped to her stomach at the suggestion. “This will become a murder investigation.”
“Oh, God,” she whispered brokenly.
“Do you have anything else you want to tell me about?”
She pulled up her shawl. “It’s nothing certain. You’ll just think it’s women’s intuition, and nobody puts much stock in that.”
“Well, I do. That gut feeling, that hunch or sense of something—that’s how crimes get solved. I can’t say that I have a lot of practice with that type of thing around here. Powell Springs is a peaceful little town. But that’s why I ask questions.”
“It’s almost nothing, just a coincidence.”
He settled his hat back on his head. “Let me decide what’s important and what isn’t, okay? You just take care of your man.”
She sighed and nodded. “It’s true—Riley has had a terrible time adjusting to life here. I can’t blame him for that after everything he’s been through. Once he got most of his memory back, though, he started drinking more. It sounds odd, but I think he was happier living in that strange world where he couldn’t remember the war or the family. Now he’s become even less settled than he was before he regained his memory—as if he doesn’t know where he belongs or who he should be.” She shrugged. “I know he resents Tanner. How could he not? And I think his father has been planting notions in his head too. Shaw never liked the idea of my marrying Tanner.” She went on to tell him about seeing his profile briefly at the back door that morning, then hurried to explain. “But really, Whit, you know everyone out here keeps a loaded weapon close by. We have to, what with coyotes coming down from the hills and so on. We even had that cougar pestering us for a while. If I heard a gunshot, I’d probably react the same way he did. After all, Cole had a gun, too.” She realized she was apologizing not only for herself but for Riley as well.
“Sure. I understand.” He looked skeptical. “Well, thanks, Miss Susannah. I’ll check around while there’s still some daylight and see if I can learn anything.” He started to turn for the door. “Oh, by the way, where are Riley and Shaw now?”
“We left them at the house, but that was early this morning.”
He nodded again. “I might take another run out there and see if they have any ideas.” Then he opened the door and walked out.
• • •
“You’re a woman—do you think she’ll ever come back?” Orville Forster asked. He sat on the edge of Emmaline’s thin mattress and bent over his considerable belly to tie his shoes. When he stood up, she saw that his face and bald head had turned crimson with the effort and he sucked in a gasp of air. “I keep hoping I’ll get a letter from her, telling me she made a bad mistake and is on her way home. Do you think that will happen?” He still wanted Emmaline’s ear but now he also wanted the rest of her body, and she increased her price to him accordingly.
That he’d made it up here in this weather surprised her, but it told her that he was a man unlikely to give up on an idea, no matter how foolish.
“Sure, Orville, she might,” she replied, spritzing the bottom sheet with an atomizer filled with five-and-dime rose water. He asked her the same thing every time she saw him. The fact that Lorna, a flighty young woman almost twenty years his junior, had been gone since the end of the war didn’t seem to rain on his dream, so Em told him what he wanted to hear.
He reached for his porkpie hat and put her money on the table. “Thanks, Emmaline. You’re just so nice to talk to and all.”
She finished straightening the bedding and adjusted the tie on her new dressing gown. The old one had become so threadbare, she’d had to break down and replace it. “I’m always happy to help,” she lied. “You take care of yourself.”
He walked the few paces to the door and she followed, eager for him to leave so she could wash.
“I’ll see you again.” He lifted his hat and went outside. Frigid air and the clean smell of snow blew in.
She watched to make sure he was gone, then locked the door and turned to go to the washstand she kept behind the dressing screen. Passing the table, she saw his empty money clip. He must have forgotten it. She picked it up and put it on a shelf over the sink.
With her enameled pitcher in hand, she poured hot water into it from the stove and then began working the pump to add some cold. But before one drop made its way out of the spout, she heard a hard knock on her door. Still holding the pitcher, she sighed and grabbed the money clip. That Orville—she’d seen about as much of him as she wanted to for the next month. Maybe next time he dropped by, she’d be “busy.” She opened the door without bothering to ask who was on the other side.
Em found herself staring down a rifle barrel and into the coldeyed, long face of a menacing-looking man who seemed vaguely familiar. Behind him, she recognized someone she wanted to see far less than Orville. The last man she wanted her eyes to fall upon: Lambert Bauer.
Before she had a chance to grab her shotgun, they pushed their way inside. Emmaline dropped the money clip, and with both hands, launched the boiling water in the pitcher at them, scorching her fingers. “Get out!” she yelled with all the authority she could muster from her outnumbered position. The wa
ter caught Lambert square in the face, and some splashed on the other man. “Get the hell out of my house!”
Lambert squealed like the scalded pig that he was, and his partner backhanded first him, and then Emmaline. “Shut up!”
She hit the floor, still holding the pitcher, which clanged like a cast-iron kettle. Her head felt as if her brain had bumped against her skull with the impact. With no small effort, she pulled herself up and got to her feet.
“Who are you to come busting in? What are you doing here?” she demanded when her ears stopped ringing. Getting slapped wouldn’t send her cowering to the corner. But damn it, the coldeyed man had taken her shotgun from beside the door.
“We’re just going to keep you company for a while,” he said, peeking out the windows. “Is there another way out of here?”
“No.”
Meanwhile, Lambert righted himself. His face and neck were red and beginning to blister. “Goddamn bitch! Look what she did to my face!” he complained to his partner. Despite her own peril, Em felt a moment of supreme satisfaction in looking at the damage. All the black eyes and bruises he’d given her, his years of berating her, forcing himself on her…Right or wrong, her revenge felt good.
“Can’t say it looks any worse than before. I’ve had a bellyful of your whining and laziness,” Rush griped. “You’re as useless as tits on a boar.”
Em remembered Jobie Rush now. He’d visited her a couple of times in the past few months, but there had been nothing remarkable about him to make him stick out in her memory. Until today.
Keeping a death grip on the pitcher, now her only weapon, she considered her options and found few. “What have you done this time, Lambert?” She didn’t want to antagonize these intruders but she was more angry than frightened. Would she never be rid of this man?
“You mind your own damned business, Emmaline,” he snapped, “which, by the way, I hear is booming. Once a whore, always a whore!”
Rush turned and pointed the shotgun at both of them. “Bauer, Em, both of you be quiet or I’ll shoot you myself.” He looked just menacing enough to keep his word. “Tear up that bedsheet and tie her to a chair,” he said to Lambert.
Home by Nightfall Page 18