by Wilma Counts
“There’s more,” Phillips said. “There are two large wagons sort of hidden behind the largest outbuilding out at the mine. They’ve been there for two days. Another two in the barn on that abandoned farm.”
“Definitely something going on.” Alex brushed crumbs from his coat.
“The weather has been rather overcast the last two or three nights,” Phillips said, twisting to look at the sky through the window. “They are sure to move with the first clear moonlit night. Maybe tonight. Or tomorrow night. My men are ready. Actually, getting a bit restless with all this delay.”
Alex nodded. “I can certainly relate to that. Mac and I will keep watch, and the moment we see any action below that cliff, we will report to the mine. I think most of the transfer will take place there.”
“I agree. I’ll accompany my main force to the mine area but send Captain Howell out to that farm with a small contingent as well.”
“Good idea.” Alex rose and took his leave of the colonel and made his way back to the Abbey. He thought he was probably as restless and anxious as any of those militiamen.
Nothing happened that night, but the next night all hell broke loose.
Alex and Mac lay on the grass at the edge of the Abbey cliff overlooking the sea. Although gossamer-like clouds streaked the sky, the moon shone brightly. The sea looked silvery. They kept their heads down lest they be seen from the beach below. The night was chilly and the grass damp with dew—autumn was definitely in the offing. They had been there about an hour when they began to see activity below. It was eerily quiet with only the occasional whack of a bit of harness, a muffled call, or the loud snort of an animal drifting up to them, but they could see the dark forms of men and pack animals, going into the cave unladen, and heavily burdened coming out. They watched until the traffic dribbled to nothing, then inched their way from the edge of the cliff, stood, and mounted the horses they had left some distance behind. They knew it would take the smugglers, with their slow pack animals, far more time to get to the transfer area at the mine than it would take the two of them on swifter mounts.
Alex and Mac, each armed with a rifle and a pistol, were cautious in approaching the fence around the yard of the mine entrance; having tied their horses in a clump of bushes, they walked the last hundred yards or so, hitting the ground and crawling as they got closer. The bare ground was warmer than the chilly night air and the dusty, earthy smell more pronounced as they neared the fence on their bellies.
As they got closer, they could hear the smugglers and their customers as they talked and argued about the loading process, and they could see in the muted light dark red forms of the militiamen on their own side of the stone fence—along with even darker forms of a few of the townspeople who had been trusted to join them. Colonel Phillips was in charge of this operation; knowing that the longer the delay, the more likelihood of losing the advantage of surprise, Alex waited none-too-patiently for him to call the attack.
Finally the signal: A sharp whistle sounded and the militia team jumped to their feet outside the chest-high fence and aimed their rifles across it.
“Halt!” Phillips shouted. “You are surrounded and you are under arrest.”
The immediate response was rifle shots coming from guards stationed on the roofs of the buildings. The shots panicked both the pack animals and those hitched to wagons. Mayhem ensued. The militiamen had been trained to pick their targets carefully, but many shots went wild as they tried to use the stone fence to shield themselves. Moonlight was hardly conducive to making targets clear, and the poor visibility was worsened by dust stirred up by panicked animals. Animals and men alike screamed as they were hit. Shouted directions and cries of pain and fear added to the melee.
It flashed across Alex’s mind that this scene was but a repeat of previous experiences, experiences that he relived on a nightly basis. He ignored that thought and concentrated on the task at hand: capture, not killing, was the goal he and Phillips had agreed on.
The gate had been unlocked and one wagon tried to make a run for it, the driver whipping his team into a frenzy. But it halted just outside the gate, when two militiamen grabbed part of the harness and stopped the team. The driver and his guards were quickly subdued. But the fight went on.
“Oh, sweet Jesus!” Mac called out near Alex. “I’m hit.”
“Hang on, Mac. And stay down!” He crawled over to Mac’s position.
Soon enough, the shots became sporadic and it was over. Alex conjectured that it had been only a matter of minutes, but it seemed far longer than that. The smugglers were forced to surrender. Alex turned instantly to Mac, who had his right hand pressed against his chest just below the left shoulder.
“How are you doing, Mac?”
“Bleeding, but I’m still breathing.”
Alex took off his own coat and wrapped it awkwardly around Mac’s injured shoulder, tucking in a sleeve to help stanch the flow of blood. “Keep pressing on it,” he said. “Just stay still until we get things in order here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lanterns materialized, probably from the mine buildings, and Alex and Phillips, with the help of two of Phillips’s junior officers, made quick work of assessing the damage. Militiamen stood guard over smugglers who were uninjured or had suffered only bruises and scratches. These were bound hand and foot and put into the mine’s largest outbuilding, which became a makeshift jail for the time being. Guards were posted.
Of the perhaps forty or fifty men involved in the fight, there were four dead: one on the side of the militia, and three of the smugglers. Besides Mac, seven others had been wounded: three militiamen and four smugglers. Alex and Phillips, directing others, made quick work of trying to tend to wounds, ripping shirts to form makeshift bandages, and taking care of a broken leg and a broken arm. A wagon was quickly divested of its half-loaded cargo, the wounded replaced the cargo, and a young militiaman was commandeered to drive it to the Whitbys’ clinic. Alex retrieved his and Mac’s horses and, leading Mac’s mount, he rode beside the wagon, which necessarily maintained a slow pace. Alex could see that Mac was in a great deal of pain, but he was conscious, and aside from an occasional groan, did not complain.
Alex had seen Teague among the group loading goods onto the wagons, but he had not seen him among those incarcerated in the makeshift jail and he was not on this wagon. Alex fumed silently over this, and he wondered how many others had managed to escape. He could not be concerned about that now, though. The task at hand was getting these men proper medical care.
“Mac, you hang on now, you hear?” Alex said to man who had seen him through so many similar situations. “I am going to ride ahead and prepare the Whitbys for what’s ahead.”
“Right, sir.” Mac winced as the wagon hit a rut on the road.
Ten minutes later, Alex knocked on the door of Whitby Manor. It was well after midnight, so it was a very sleepy Stewart who answered. Alex quickly explained the situation, then waited in the entrance hall as Stewart roused the Whitbys. The elder Whitby was the first to appear, then his son, Michael. A few minutes behind them was Hero.
“Let’s step into the surgery as you tell us what’s going on,” the elder doctor said.
The five of them—Stewart had rejoined the group—retreated to that room and stood around the operating table as Alex briefly explained the events of the evening. He thought Hero seemed a bit subdued, but she listened as carefully as her father and brother did as he described as best he could the nature of the wounds they would be dealing with. Nor did she avoid eye contact with him. Forcing himself not to just stare at her hungrily, he nodded his acknowledgment of her presence. He wondered if she had got over being angry with him, but now was not the time to pursue that thought.
Her father sighed. “We knew it was coming, did we not? Eight wounded, you say?”
“Yes, sir. From the encounter at the mine entrance. There may be m
ore from those at the abandoned farm—but that group was not so large.”
“Stewart,” the eldest Whitby said, “you’d best wake Mrs. Hutchins and have her keep plenty of hot water available. And have Nellie Matson join us too.”
“And my wife,” Michael added. “She is already awake and probably dressed by now.”
“Yes, sir.”
Stewart disappeared for several minutes and the others waited for the sound of the wagon. For the first time Hero asked a question of Alex. He was glad for the excuse to direct his attention to her. She was wearing a blue dress of some sturdy fabric, and her single night braid had been twisted and pinned up. He wanted to jump over the table and enfold her in his arms.
“Was Milton Tamblin there tonight?” she asked a bit hesitantly.
“I did not see him,” Alex said, “but he could have been at the farm. The other two Abbey farmers involved before were there, so I am guessing that Teague put pressure on Tamblin too.”
“And Mr. Teague himself?” she asked. Alex wondered why she asked about the former steward. That altercation he had witnessed the other day had not shown her to have undue interest in the man.
“He was there, but somehow escaped capture,” he answered in a neutral tone.
Nellie and Monique joined them just as the wagon arrived. Suddenly everyone, including Alex, was busy either moving wounded or attending to their injuries.
Chapter 21
As Hero went about helping with the injured, she was keenly aware of her own physical reaction to the presence of Lord Alexander Sterne. Without his coat, his shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, he exuded masculinity, and she had to remind herself that this was the absentee owner of the Abbey: He who had ignored the needs of Weyburn folks for so long was now pitching in to help move wounded from the wagon to litters and cots. The mere fact that he did so was impressive, but equally noteworthy was the care and tenderness he showed in the process. Nor did he arrogantly push for his friend Mac to take precedence over a man—a smuggler, at that—whom the Whitbys considered to be more seriously wounded, a man shot in the chest, the bullet lodged dangerously close to his heart. Mac himself was handling his pain stoically and Adam—no, Alex—was attentive in wiping his brow with a damp cloth and murmuring soothing encouragement to him. Here—this—was Adam, the man who had shown her such tenderness and empathy.
She did not like having to reevaluate her long-held aversion to the owner of Weyburn Abbey. And at the moment, she welcomed the need to concentrate on other matters—like sewing up a ripped scalp, or where a bullet had torn a three-inch gouge in the fleshy part of a man’s forearm. The patient, one of the militiamen, was a big fellow, but young—only in his teens—scared, and far from home. As her father, brother, and Monique worked on the man with the chest wound, Hero tended her own patient, who sat upright in a wooden chair in a corner of the surgery. Blood had soaked through his red jacket, which she helped him remove, and into the white shirt beneath. Nellie Matson had moved a small table nearby to hold a basin and cloths and the instruments Hero would need. Nellie helped hold his arm steady on the table as Hero cleaned the wound and prepared to stitch it closed. The wound continued to bleed as she worked. The fresh, redder blood frightened him even more and he winced with every stitch.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I know this hurts. If it is any consolation to you, the scar will fade in time, though your arm will be quite sore for a while and you will need to keep it in a sling. The girls will be impressed with how brave you are.”
He grinned feebly at this.
She kept up her nonsense chatter to try to distract him not only from his own pain and his obvious aversion to the sight of blood, but also from the blood and pain of the other patient nearby. She finished by gently washing his entire arm as well as his face and neck. She and Nellie wrapped a bandage about the wound and fashioned a sling for him, then they escorted him to one of several cots that had been set up in the hallway.
“You may feel a little dizzy, so you just lie here quietly until someone comes to take you back to your quarters,” she said.
“C-could I have a drink of water?”
“Of course. Nellie?”
Nellie nodded and went to fulfill that request. Hero turned to attend the next patient—and found herself staring into the blue depths of the eyes of Alexander Sterne. Mac lay on his side on one of the cots; Alex squatted next to him, apparently trying to keep his friend distracted from the pain he must be feeling.
“Oh,” she said, startled.
“I assume Mac is next in line,” Alex said, standing.
“I think so. But let me check to see that the table has been cleared.”
She seized the chance to postpone confronting her own conflicted feelings about this man. Having carefully transferred the smuggler with the chest wound to one of the wheeled beds, both Drs. Whitby were washing up as Nellie and Monique laid a clean sheet on the table. At the doctors’ signal, Alex and Stewart lifted the cot to use it as a litter to transfer Mac to the table, and, with the help of the doctors, place him so he lay on the table on his uninjured side. This done, Alex stood back.
“The shot came from the roof, so it entered just below Mac’s shoulder at an angle. I believe the bullet is lodged in his upper back,” he said. “Right, Mac?”
“Yes, sir.” Mac was breathing hard with the exertion of the move from cot to table, but even this brief conversation reinforced for Hero what she had observed before: These two men, from distinctly different classes, had a great deal of respect and affection for each other.
“Hero,” her father said, noticeably favoring one of his feet and leaning on his cane, “you and Michael are on your own with this one. Michael has more experience with bullet wounds than I do. Stewart and I will see what we can do about those broken bones. Monique, you stay with Michael and Hero. Nellie, you come with me.”
“Yes, Papa,” Hero responded, but added, as she was already gently loosening the extra coat around the patient and Monique was unbuttoning his waistcoat, “You must try to sit for a while, Papa. Tell Stewart and Nellie what to do—they can handle it.”
“She’s getting to be really bossy, isn’t she?” her father said in mock umbrage to the room at large.
“Yes,” her brother agreed, “but she’s right.”
“Et tu, Brute?”
As the elder Dr. Whitby and his two assistants left the room, the others turned their full attention to the patient on the table. With Alex’s help in lifting and holding Mac so that Hero and Monique could remove the coat and waistcoat, they undressed him down to his shirt. In the process, Hero felt it acutely whenever her hands came in contact with Alex’s. Her body had not forgot the sensations his touch generated.
“Not to tell you professionals your business,” Alex said, “but why don’t you just cut the shirt off him? Save him some pain, perhaps.”
They readily agreed to that, though Mac protested. “This shirt cost me a whole quid!”
“I’ll buy you another,” Alex said.
“Sorry about that loss—and our abusing your modesty so,” Michael told him. “Not to mention the pain—but we have to strip you to the waist.”
“I have endured worse,” Mac said with a hoarse grunt.
“Indeed you have,” Michael said as the bare flesh of Mac’s upper torso was revealed.
Numerous scars crisscrossed his body, including some from what appeared to Hero to have been a flogging. She drew in a sharp breath on seeing these, and her eyes locked with Alex’s. He nodded in response to her unasked question. “Mac is a man with principles. When he protested the abuse of a young soldier, he ran up against an officer who had none.”
“Good grief,” she murmured.
She and Michael both examined the entry wound, which still bled but not profusely. They probed to ensure that no bones had been nicked, leaving splinters to cause probl
ems later, then they ran their hands along his back and found a bump that they determined was the bullet under flesh and skin. Mac flinched when they touched that area.
“That bullet will have to come out,” Michael said, and looked to Hero for her agreement.
“Just do what you gotta do,” Mac said. Alex gave his uninjured shoulder a gentle pat of encouragement.
Brother and sister working together, the entire procedure was accomplished in a matter of a few minutes. Hero was impressed with the quiet efficiency with which Monique assisted her husband by having the exact instruments ready for incisions, and then somewhat surprised that she just as unobtrusively helped her in stitching the two incisions closed and bandaging them. Monique had also periodically wiped the sweaty brow of the patient, who endured all these ministrations with very few gasps and moans. Hero could tell that such stoicism came at a price: The man was exhausted when it was over.
“Unless you need me for anything else,” Alex said, “I will take Mac home—free up some of your hospital space. That is, I will do that if you will lend us a blanket and a carriage and team. I will return them within an hour or so and retrieve our mounts then.”
The elder Dr. Whitby came into the surgery as Alex made this request. “Of course. You are welcome to whatever you need. Captain Howell arrived a few minutes ago with two more patients from the altercation at the Thompson farm and with several militiamen who will guard the prisoners among the wounded. We have plenty of help now. And none of the remaining wounds is truly serious. We should be finished by the time you return.”
“Later, then.” Alex looked at Hero directly and held her gaze for a long moment, then nodded to her and to the others. Then he was gone. And she was no nearer to dealing with her mixed feelings about one Major Lord Alexander Sterne than she had been, say, almost two weeks ago.
* * * *
Alex saw Mac safely tucked into his own bed and assigned a male member of the Abbey’s skeletal staff to keep constant watch over the injured man. He then returned to Whitby Manor, hoping that he could manage some time alone with Hero and try to resolve the situation between them. He was determined to fight for whatever they had had. If only he could convince her that it was worth fighting for.