After a moment Bill realized he was riding back almost in the direction from which he had come. The cattle were circling and slowing, just as Hob had said they would if the leaders were turned.
Bill felt a flush of pride. This was his first stampede—shoot, it was his first real cattle drive—and he felt like he had met the challenge and come through with flying colors. He pulled back on the buckskin’s reins, slowing the pony, and angled away from the herd. Some of the other drovers were waiting up ahead, he saw. They would keep the cattle moving in the right direction.
Some of the longhorns were bound to have scattered during the confusion, and it might take a day or two to round them all up, but it could have been a lot worse, Bill reflected as he jogged along easily on the buckskin. He reached behind him and got hold of his hat. As he settled it on his head, though, he felt something strange about it. Frowning, he took off the hat and held it in front of him, peering at it in the moonlight.
There was a hole in the crown that hadn’t been there before. Bill stuck his finger through the ragged opening and wiggled it.
The blood in his veins seemed to turn to ice water. That was a bullet hole.
He remembered the long-haired man firing the shot that had started the cattle running. Bill had seen the muzzle flash from that shot, had seen it quite plainly.
That was because the gun had been pointed at him, he realized now.
The stranger had tried to kill him—and judging by the hole in his hat, the slug had come mighty close to doing just that.
“Watch out, Bill!”
That was Hob’s voice, Bill thought as he jerked his head up. He caught a glimpse of the trail boss galloping toward him, then saw more movement out of the corner of his eye. Lunging toward him was that brindle steer, which had broken away from the milling mass of the rest of the herd. The steer had its head down and was charging him, and Bill tried desperately to yank the cow pony out of the way.
He was too late. The steer tossed its head, sweeping its long, wicked length of horn at him, and Bill heard the buckskin scream as the horn ripped into its flank. The next instant, the horn struck Bill’s left leg about midway up his thigh. It was like having a sledgehammer and an ax slam into his flesh at the same time. He screamed as pain shot through him.
Bill felt the buckskin falling but could do nothing to stop it. Horse and rider both toppled, and the dusty ground turned into a sea of agony that pulled Bill down and swallowed him without a trace.
Chapter 2
Eden Monroe heard the shouting from Redemption’s main street and wondered what was going on. Not another killing, she prayed silently. Moving out from behind the counter, she started up the aisle between the shelves of merchandise toward the front of the store.
Her father emerged from the back room and said sharply, “Eden.” She looked over at him, and he shook his head. “Whatever’s going on out yonder, it’s none of our business,” he said.
Eden sighed. With his long white beard and barrel chest, Perry Monroe looked like an Old Testament prophet. Maybe at one time in his life, he had been a religious man. After all, someone had been responsible for naming her after the garden where Adam and Eve had lived, and Eden had never known if that had been her father or the mother who had died when Eden was only a child. But no one would mistake the storekeeper for devout now. He cussed like a mule skinner and retreated most nights into a bottle of whiskey.
“I heard someone yell for the doctor,” said Eden as she pushed her honey-colored hair back from her face. “Somebody’s hurt.”
“Somebody’s always hurting in this world. It’s still none of our business. You get back behind the counter where you belong.”
Eden wasn’t sure why she had to stay behind the counter. It wasn’t like there were any customers in the store. Monroe Mercantile’s trade was drying up, just like all the other businesses in Redemption. Folks didn’t buy as much when they were scared all the time, never knowing when someone else was going to be murdered.
But her father was glaring at her, and Eden turned back toward the rear of the store as he had told her. Then, abruptly, she stopped, her back stiffening. With a defiant glance at him, she turned around again and walked swiftly to the front door. As she stepped out onto the porch, she heard her father’s muttered, angry curses behind her.
A few doors down the street, half a dozen men on horseback sat in front of the marshal’s office. Eden caught her breath. The strangers’ clothes marked them as cowboys from Texas, and Marshal Frank Porter didn’t allow cowboys inside the town limits. Porter stood on the boardwalk in front of his office, thumbs hooked in his gun belt, looking up at the horsebackers with a curious expression on his weathered face.
“There a sawbones in this town?” asked one of the Texans. “We got a hurt man here, needs some medical attention.”
For the first time, Eden noticed that one of the cowboys was tied onto his saddle. He was hunched forward, his young face gray and haggard so that he looked older than his years. A bloody bandage was wrapped tightly around his thigh.
“Guess you didn’t see the sign at the edge of town,” Marshal Porter said, his voice calm and unruffled as usual.
“We saw it, but like I said, we got a hurt man who needs help. And the herd ain’t anywhere near the town. We’ve got’em bedded down a good two miles east of here. Now, you got a doctor or not?”
“Closest pillroller’s in Dodge City,” said the marshal. “Reckon you’ll have to take this fella on there.”
The spokesman for the cowboys shook his head. “Can’t do it. Bill needs help now, not in the three or four days it’d take to get to Dodge.”
Porter shrugged and said, “You can get there faster’n that if you ride hard.”
“Bill can’t ride hard with a leg hurt this bad,” grated the Texan, who was clearly on the brink of losing his temper.
Eden glanced down the street and saw Zach Norris coming along the boardwalk toward the marshal’s office. Norris was Marshal Porter’s deputy, a young man who might have been handsome had it not been for the hard cast to his features and the pale scar that ran from his left eye down past the corner of his mouth. The townspeople who had gathered on the boardwalk to watch the commotion in front of the marshal’s office didn’t waste any time getting out of the way to let Norris by.
“You can bring him over here.”
The words were out of Eden’s mouth before she even knew she was going to say something. From the door of the mercantile behind her where her father stood, she heard a startled curse rip out. “No, you can’t,” Perry Monroe declared stubbornly.
“Bring him over here,” Eden repeated as the Texans turned to look at her, surprise etched on their darkly tanned faces.
Zach Norris had reached the marshal’s office. He propped one hip against the railing that ran along the edge of the boardwalk and watched with seemingly casual interest as Marshal Porter walked toward Eden, a frown on his face. “Are you sure you want to do that, Miss Monroe?” asked the lawman.
Eden felt herself nod. “I can take care of that injured leg.”
“I know you’ve patched up some folks before, but this man—” Porter leaned his head toward the strangers as he went on in a low voice, “This man is a Texan.”
“He’s still a human being.”
Porter grunted as if he had a difficult time wrapping his mind around the concept of a Texan being human. Then he shrugged and said, “If that’s what you want.” His tone of voice made it plain that he was washing his hands of the whole matter.
“Blast it, nobody asked me what I think!” Eden’s father protested. “I won’t have it—”
Eden turned to look at him. “I can take him somewhere else,” she said. She didn’t have to add that in that case, she would leave, too.
Monroe blanched. She was all he had left, and they both knew it. For all his bluster, he didn’t want to force the showdown that had been brewing between them. “All right, all right,” he said with a grudging
nod. “Bring the fella over here. We’ll do what we can to make him comfortable.”
The Texan who had done the talking reached over to grasp the reins of the injured man’s horse. He was middle-aged, his face lined and cured from years of exposure to sun and wind, and a thick, graying mustache hung over his mouth. As he led the little group over to the mercantile, he nodded to Eden and said, “We’re much obliged for the help, ma’am.”
Eden returned the nod and didn’t look at Porter and Norris. She knew the marshal was watching the proceedings with a frown of disapproval, and the deputy more than likely had the same cynical amusement dancing in his dark eyes that was nearly always there.
“There’s a cot in our storeroom,” Eden told the Texans as they began to swing down from their saddles. “You can put him there.”
Several of the cowboys untied the injured man and eased him down from the saddle. He was only half conscious, Eden saw, but he was awake enough to feel the pain that must have shot through him every time his friends jostled him. She stepped aside to let them carry him through the door.
The spokesman moved up alongside her and asked, “How come this town hates cowboys so much?”
Eden thought about the crudely painted sign displayed so prominently beside the trail leading into Redemption from the south. NO COWBOYS OR TEXANS OF ANY SORT ALLOWED INSIDE TOWN LIMITS UNDER PENALTY OF LAW! it read, and most of the time Marshal Porter and Zach Norris enforced it stringently.
“We have our reasons,” Eden said. “When the railhead first moved to Dodge and the cattle trails shifted to the west, herds came through here all the time. They tore up the gardens people had planted, and the drovers caused a lot of trouble in town. We just decided we didn’t want them here anymore.”
The Texan looked at her through eyes slitted by sun and suspicion. “Some places tried to charge a toll on every herd that came through,” he said. “Sometimes the price was so high it was out-and-out robbery. Fellas who’d been on the trail for weeks comin’ up from Texas would get a mite upset when you Kansans tried to pull such high-handed tactics. Maybe Redemption was one of those towns.”
Eden didn’t confirm or deny the accusation. She just turned toward the door and said, “I’ll see what I can do for your friend.”
She went to the storeroom, and behind her she heard the Texan say to her father, “Rustlers tried to hit us last night. Started a stampede, thinkin’ they could cut out a good bunch of our cattle after they’d scattered. Only they didn’t scatter, thanks to that boy in there. He turned the herd before the stampede could get started good.” The man’s voice was full of pride.
“What happened to the rustlers?” asked Monroe, curious in spite of his hostility.
“They got away in the confusion. We pegged a few shots after ’em, but I don’t reckon any of the slugs hit anything.”
“Rustling’s a bad business.”
That was the last thing Eden heard as she stepped into the storeroom. The cowboys who had carried the injured man in moved back from the cot where they had placed him and hurriedly jerked their hats off. They all nodded politely to her.
“I’ll take a look at him,” she said as she moved to the side of the cot.
“Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am,” said one of the men, “but are you a doctor?”
Eden shook her head. “No. Like the marshal said, the closest real doctor is in Dodge. But I’ve done some midwifery.”
One of the other cowboys said dryly, “I don’t reckon that’s ol’ Bill’s problem, ma’am.”
“What happened to him?”
“He got gored by a contrary ol’ steer,” said the first cowboy who had spoken to her. “That longhorn ripped his leg open real good, too.”
Eden could see that for herself as soon as she got the bloody bandage unwrapped. The cowboy’s pants leg had been cut away, leaving his thigh bare. The wound was an ugly one, long and ragged. It should have been sewn up by a real doctor, so that the scar wouldn’t be so prominent when it healed, but she would do the best she could. She could keep the injury clean and stitch it so it would heal. It wouldn’t be pretty, though.
“Is the bone broken?” she asked.
“Don’t seem to be.”
The leg looked straight enough. Eden nodded. “All this man needs now is some stitches and to stay off his feet for a while so that wound can heal up. I shouldn’t have any trouble tending him.”
“Well, I sure hope you take good care of him, ma’am. We set quite a store by Billy since he stopped that stampede last night. Probably kept some good men from gettin’ trampled.”
“Billy . . .” she repeated. “What’s the rest of his name?”
“Harvey,” replied the cowboy. “Bill Harvey. He don’t really like it when you call him Billy.”
Eden nodded. “I’ll try to remember that.”
The older Texan who had been talking to her father opened the door and came into the storeroom. “How’s he doin’?”
Eden glanced at the young man on the cot. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing fairly regularly. She didn’t know if he had fallen asleep or passed out, but she said, “He’s resting easily, and that’s the best thing for him right now.”
The Texan nodded. “Like I was tellin’ your daddy, ma’am, my name’s Hob Sanders. I’m the trail boss of our outfit, and I surely do appreciate you takin’ care of Bill this way. When we come back through from Dodge, I’ll be glad to pay you whatever you think’s fair for your time and trouble.”
“You’re going to leave him here until after you’ve taken your herd to the railhead?” asked Eden, surprised.
“Don’t see as we’ve got much choice,” replied Sanders. “Figured you knew that’s what we meant to do. Bill ain’t in no shape to travel and likely won’t be for several weeks.”
“No, that’s true,” Eden admitted. What the trail boss said made sense; she just hadn’t thought it through until now. The offer to help had been made impulsively.
Hob Sanders had his hat in his hand, like the other Texans. Now he put it back on, tugging it down hard on his graying hair. “We’d best get back to the herd,” he said. “Take good care of that boy, Miss Monroe.”
Obviously her father had told the Texan their name, Eden thought. “I intend to,” she said.
The drovers filed out of the storeroom. Eden followed them and found that Marshal Porter and Zach Norris had come into the store. The two lawmen were waiting for the Texans. Porter said to Hob Sanders, “All right, you’ve taken care of what brought you here, mister. I’ll thank you if you and your friends get on out of town now.”
“We’re goin’,” said Sanders. “I don’t reckon we got any reason to stay where we ain’t wanted. But I’ll tell you right now, Marshal, we’ll be comin’ back to get our pard back there.”
Porter nodded. “That’s fine. But no more than two of you will have to come back into town to pick up your man.”
Sanders shrugged, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the condition the marshal had set. The Texans trooped out of the mercantile, followed by the marshal and Norris, who watched the men mount up and ride out of Redemption.
Perry Monroe heaved a sigh of relief, then turned to glower at his daughter. “What in blue blazes have you got us into this time, girl?” he demanded.
Eden thought about the man lying asleep—or unconscious—in the back room and shook her head. She didn’t know how to answer her father’s question.
She just didn’t know.
Chapter 3
Bill didn’t remember anything clearly after he’d passed out the night before. In fact, as awareness seeped back into his brain and he realized he was lying on a cot, he wasn’t even sure it had been the night before when that brindle steer had gored him. For all he knew, he could’ve been unconscious for days or even weeks.
He managed to open his eyes, even though his eyelids each seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. He saw crates stacked on the floor and burlap bags leaning against the wall and some rolls of
cloth angled in a corner.
On the other side of the small room was an open door. It let enough bright light into the room to make Bill’s eyes narrow and he winced a little as he tried to get used to the glare. As his vision began to adjust, he was able to make out some sets of shelves holding store goods. His brain was pretty foggy, but he figured out he was in the back room of some sort of mercantile.
That meant he was in a town. Hob and the boys must have brought him here in search of a sawbones to take care of him.
That was good. Hob was loyal to the men who rode for him, and that made them loyal to him. Bill hoped the doc would be through with him soon so he could get back to the herd.
He pushed himself up on an elbow so he could look down at himself. Somebody had draped a sheet over the lower half of his body. For a second he was struck with a feeling of utter horror as he wondered if his leg had been hurt so bad the doctor had been forced to cut it off. He had heard men who’d fought in the war talking about how army surgeons had hacked off thousands of wounded limbs, so many sometimes that the amputated arms and legs stacked up like cordwood outside the hospital tents.
The pain he felt convinced him his leg was still there, but not completely. He had also heard veterans talk about how a missing limb could hurt just as bad or worse than one that was still attached. He had to reach down with a trembling hand and touch his left leg through the sheet before the wild pounding of his heart began to slow to a normal rate.
He pushed the sheet down and saw to his surprise that he was naked from the waist down except for what appeared to be several layers of fresh bandages wrapped around his injured leg. The sound of a footstep somewhere nearby reminded him the door was open and anybody walking by in the store could look in at him. He grabbed the sheet and jerked it back up so he was covered.
Just in time, too, because a figure moved into the doorway, blocking some of the light, and a woman’s voice said, “You’re awake. Good.”
As the woman came into the room, Bill’s strength gave out. He sagged back onto the pillow somebody had placed under his head. He made sure he kept hold of the sheet, though, so it didn’t slip.
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