Patricia Potter - The Lawman

He ground his teeth to keep an expletive—or worse, a groan—from escaping his lips. He swayed as they entered the building. He tried to take a step with his good leg and sagged against the woman. Her arm tightened around his body. Stronger…than she looked. Hell…of a lot stronger.

A step, a hop.

He fought the fog closing in on him. Too much blood lost in those seconds before the tourniquet was in place. And the worst was yet to come. The damn bullet in his leg had to come out. He also knew the wound would probably need to be cauterized to stop the bleeding and infection.

He was only too aware that more men died in the Civil War from infections and fever than from ordnance. He’d been lucky thus far. He had survived three bullets: two during the war, one while marshaling. Shoulder. Side. Left arm. A bayonet had nicked his face.

He tried to focus on the woman rather than the pain. Who in the hell was she? Thornton’s woman? Must be, to risk her life. Hell, the man must be decades older than she was.

Another step. Why? Why was he being helped inside? As a hostage maybe? To wait for Thornton? The original question pressed him: Why not just a bullet in his heart? Or had she really aimed for his leg? If so, it had been one hell of a gamble.

He might have made the same gamble, though. He was tired of killing. During those few tense minutes outside while he’d tried to avoid a shooting, his mind flickered back to a boy he’d encountered two months earlier. The kid was no more than seventeen, but Jared hadn’t known that then. He’d only seen the gun in the boy’s hand when Jared stepped out of the stable after feeding his horse.

He groaned inwardly, but it was more from the memory than pain. Why now, dammit? Why did those pImages** continue to haunt him? Maybe he should have quit hunting men. He’d been at it far too long….

Then they were inside the saloon.

“Back room,” the old man said to the girl, then as an aside to Jared, “Used it as a cell after the jail burned down.”

Ironic.

The old man and the woman helped him through the back door of the saloon, then down the hall to a door. The woman opened it, and they half carried, half dragged him to an old iron bed and lowered him down on a thin, lumpy mattress. He made himself glance around the room. One chair and a small table in addition to the bed. Nothing else. Stout door. No windows.

His breathing was labored. The last of his strength was ebbing. So, apparently, was the old man’s. His captor collapsed on the chair, his breath coming in spurts. But the woman…

She stood straight as if his weight hadn’t been anything. Tall and slender…she was far stronger than she looked. Her gaze didn’t waver as she met his. It was almost as if she was challenging that connection he’d felt a few minutes earlier. But it was there. He’d felt it, dammit. Felt it still. How could that be? Hellions had never appealed to him. Nor had women who chose the other side of the law.

He had little doubt she was Thornton’s woman. Why else would she risk her life for him?

And why should he care whether she was or wasn’t? Maybe because of the regret in those wide golden eyes as she looked at his wound. Or the gentleness in hands that seconds earlier had fired a gun. Or maybe the glimpse of vulnerability in her expression when the old man appeared.

Her cheeks started to flush as if she knew what he was thinking, or maybe it was because of what she was thinking. She turned abruptly, put a hand on the old man’s back. “I’ll get your bag and some water.” She left the room in a quick stride. Straight. Proud. Defiant.

He fixed his thoughts on her. It blocked the pain, the knowledge of what he had to face next. Damn, but she intrigued him even now.

When she returned several minutes later, she had several sheets folded over her shoulder. She carried a black bag in one hand and a bowl of water in the other.

“Archie, are you all right?” Her voice softened as she placed the items on the table and knelt before the older man. Jared watched affection flicker between the two, and a pang of loneliness ran through him. He couldn’t remember when someone had last worried about him.

“Stop fussin’,” the man named Archie said. “Jest a mite winded. I’m all right now. Let’s get started on him.”

“I fired the stove and more water is heating. I’ll bring it as soon as it’s ready.” She obviously knew what was needed. Jared remembered the deftness with which she’d taken over the tourniquet. He would bet that this wasn’t the first time she’d treated a wounded man.

He was even more certain when she started to pull instruments from the bag and line them up on the table she placed next to the bed. He gritted his teeth as the old man yanked off his boots, then what was left of his pants. He cut away the right leg of Jared’s long underwear but managed to leave enough fabric to cover his privates. Some shred of dignity at least.

Archie’s ministrations weren’t gentle, but they were efficient, and Jared was in no position to complain. He was totally at their mercy and that galled him. He knew the pain to come would be many times worse than their jostling.

“You a doctor?” Jared asked.

“Nope, but I’ve done some doctoring ’round these parts.” Archie peered at the wound through a pair of spectacles he’d taken from a shirt pocket. “Have to take out the bullet and those scraps of cloth. I’ll sew it if I can. Cauterize it if I can’t. It’ll hurt like the blazes, but from some of them scars, I ’spect you know that.” He didn’t sound very concerned.

Jared merely nodded. He’d been through this before.

“We have a small bit of laudanum,” Archie said. “Maybe enough to help dull the pain.”

Jared didn’t like the idea of losing what little control he had. He damn well wanted to know what the man was doing to his leg. “Whiskey will do if you have some.”

Archie shrugged. “Sam will get a bottle,” he said, and the woman hurried from the room.

Sam? The old man had mentioned the name several times. Hell of a name for a woman. Even one who strapped on a gun and shot lawmen.

Archie put his hands in the bowl of water. Jared noticed the white foam. Soap. Good sign.

The man loosened the tourniquet again for a few seconds before retying it quickly. Despite the new rush of blood, Jared was grateful. Keeping the tourniquet tight would cut off the blood supply to the lower leg and he could lose it. He tried to sit upright to see what was going on, but he fell back, his breath ragged. God, he was weak.

He gritted his teeth as the old man chose a probe from the instruments the woman had lined up.

Concentrate on something else. “I would like to know the name of the man cutting me,” he said. “And…the lady’s.”

His captor frowned at him, obviously taking exception to the way he referred to the woman. “Since you ain’t likely to spread it anytime soon,” the old man said, “might as well tell you. I’m Archibald Smith. Archie to my friends. Smith to you. And the lady, she’s just Sam.”

Jared tried to wrap his mind around that. He couldn’t. She might be a lot of things, but she certainly wasn’t “just Sam.”

“Your daughter?”

“Nah.”

The old man was stingy with information. Jared clenched his teeth as he probed around the wound. Christ, it already felt as if someone was sticking white-hot knives in him. “You…raised her?”

Archie sat back and studied him with pale, watery eyes. “Sam pretty much raised herself.” He hesitated, then added, “Heard of you. Didn’t much like what I heard.”

“Because I’m a lawman?”

“You’ve been hunting Mac for years. That ain’t just marshaling, that’s something else. Something dark.”