William Johnstone - Bounty Hunter

Emily got up for a moment and came back with a wet rag. She leaned down and swabbed it over his face. The cool touch felt wonderful.

Sometime while she was doing that, he passed out again. When he woke up, bright sunlight was slanting in through the cabin’s open door.

“Huh. You ain’t dead after all.” That somewhat surprised statement came from Emily’s grandfather, who had taken her place in the rocking chair beside the bunk.

Luke licked dry, cracked lips and husked, “I could use ... something to drink.”

“Yeah, you’re pretty well wrung out, I expect. I’ll fetch you a cup.”

The old man came back with a dented tin cup. Luke took a sip of the clear liquid in it and promptly spit it out in an instinctive reaction.

“That’s a waste of good corn, son,” the old-timer said. “See if you can keep some of it down this time. You’re gonna need it.”

“What do you . . . mean by that?”

“I mean your fever may have broken for now, but that wound in your back’s in bad shape. That Yankee bullet’s got to come out if you’re gonna have any chance of makin’ it.”

Two things were wrong with that, Luke thought. It wasn’t a Yankee bullet that had laid him low, but rather one fired by a renegade Confederate. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to have a chance of making it, not in the condition he was in.

But the hatred of giving up was bred deeply within him. “All right, give me another sip of that shine.”

The old man chuckled. “Emily said you was from up in the Missouri Ozarks. I reckon you prob’ly know good corn liquor when you taste it.” He held the cup to Luke’s lips.

Carefully, Luke sipped the fiery stuff. His stomach rebelled against it, but he managed to keep it down. He drank enough that it affected him immediately and set his head to spinning. “You’re going to . . . cut the bullet of me, aren’t you?”

The old man nodded gravely. “That’s the only thing to do. As soon as Emily gets back from the tradin’ post to hold you down, we’ll get started.”

“Go ahead and . . . do it now,” Luke urged. “I can . . . stay still.”

“You don’t know what you’re sayin’. Even with that liquor in you, it’s gonna hurt worse ’n anything you ever felt before.”

“Look . . . Emily doesn’t weigh enough . . . to hold me down . . . if I start bucking around. I’m going to have to . . . control it . . . whether she’s here or not.”

The old man rubbed his jaw as he frowned in thought. His fingertips rasped on the white stubble. “More than likely you’re right about that,” he admitted. “Might not make much difference whether the gal’s here or not.”

“I don’t want her... to have to see it,” Luke said. “Give me ... a leather strap or something . . . to bite on.”

“My razor strop’ll do.”

“And maybe . . . some more of that moonshine first.”

“We can sure do that,” the old man said.

A few minutes later, after several more swallows of the potent liquor, Luke’s head was spinning even faster. He set his teeth in the leather strap and watched as the old man heated the long blade of a hunting knife in the fireplace until it glowed cherry red.

He carried the knife quickly back over to the bunk. “The wound’s scabbed over, but I’ll have to open it again so all the pus can get out. You ready?”

“Just . . . get it done,” Luke said around the strap. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

The old man was right about one thing: it hurt worse than anything Luke had ever experienced. His teeth bore down on the leather and every muscle in his body turned tight and hard as an iron strap . . . every muscle he could still feel, anyway. The mingled stink of burned flesh and corruption filled the room. Luke groaned.

After what seemed like an eternity of torture, the old-timer exclaimed, “I got it!”

Some of the terrible pressure Luke had felt in his back was released. The pain didn’t slack off much, but any relief at all was a blessing.

He felt the old man wiping at his back with a rag. “You’re bleedin’ like a stuck pig, boy, but I reckon that’s a good thing. Maybe it’ll wash out all the festerin’. If you don’t bleed to death first, that is.”

The pain continued to recede. Luke’s head slumped back to the bunk, and the leather strap slipped out of his mouth as his teeth released their grip on it. His pulse pounded inside his skull, and he breathed harshly and heavily.

“Grampaw, what in hell are you doin’?” That startled cry came from Emily. “My God, there’s blood all over the place! You’ve killed him!”

“Take it easy, gal. He’s alive. And I got that bullet outta his back.”

“Is that why you sent me to the tradin’ post?” she demanded. “So you could start cuttin’ on him without me bein’ here to stop you?”

“Shoot, I didn’t even know he was gonna wake up. His fever broke, but it would’ve come right back if I didn’t get that bullet out. Look there . . . that’s healthy blood comin’ out of him now. We can go ahead and stop it, and he can start gettin’ his strength back.”

Emily went closer to the bunk and bent down to peer at Luke’s face. He saw her only vaguely through his pain and weariness.

“You mean he’s gonna be all right?” she asked.

“I mean he’s got a chance now,” her grandfather told her.

But the biggest question, Luke thought just as he slipped back into unconsciousness, wasn’t whether he would live or not.

The question was whether his legs would work . . . or whether he was going to be a cripple for the rest of his life, however long that was.

CHAPTER 15

The fever didn’t come back. When Luke woke again, he was ravenously hungry, but able to eat only a few bites of the stew Emily fed him before it started to sicken him. He kept it down, though.

From talking to Emily, he found out it wasn’t the day after she’d rescued him from the riverbank. As a matter of fact, three days had passed since that stormy afternoon.

“You were burnin’ up with fever and out of your head most of that time,” she told him as she sat in the rocker beside the bunk. “You kept ravin’, but I couldn’t make much sense out of most of it.”

“What did I say? Did I talk about anybody in particular?”

“Oh, your ma and pa, of course. I’d expect that. And somebody named Kirby.”

“My little brother,” Luke said.

“And Janey.”

“My sister.”

“And Potter.”

It was all Luke could do not to snarl in hatred. “He’s not part of my family.”

“I hope not, the way you were talkin’ about him. Remember how I said I could cuss pretty good? Well, you had me beat all hollow while you were talkin’ about that fella Potter.”

“He’s the man who shot me,” Luke said. “He and his friends are deserters and renegades.”

“Well, then, you’ve got good reason to be cussin’ him. I figured somebody must’ve waylaid you and robbed you when I didn’t find no horse anywhere thereabouts.”

Luke waited a moment, then asked, “Did I talk about anything else?” He wanted to know if he had said anything about the gold while he was out of his head.

“Not really. There were some other names . . . Renny, somethin’ like that?”

“Remy,” Luke said. “A good friend.”

“And Dale and Edgar. Who are they?”

“More friends.” Luke didn’t offer any further explanation. Their bodies must have been taken by the river before Emily found him, otherwise she would have asked him before now who those dead men were.

Just as well, he thought. He didn’t want to tell her about the gold, about the way he had lost it and gotten his friends killed. That was a burden he was going to bear alone.