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Kat sat bolt upright throwing off the quilt, her eyes attempting to focus in the sliver of moonlight that streamed through her window. It took her awhile to remember where she was, then to work out the puzzle of what had awakened her.
"Doc! Doc! Open the door! We need you!" The voice was followed by another pounding on the front door, more insistent this time.
Throwing on her dressing gown, she made it to the door of the office before her father emerged bleary eyed from his own bedroom. She opened the door to a gush of chilling wind and was nearly knocked over by the two men who squeezed through the doorframe, stumbling into the room. One was obviously hurt, a trail of blood leaving a crimson streak on the floor.
Kat lit a lamp and led them into the examining room where she hung the lamp over the table. The injured man was not conscious, and judging from the look of his stained clothing, he'd already lost a considerable amount of blood.
"Hello Gabe, who'd you bring me?" Nathaniel asked the question in that same exaggerated slowness of speech that Kat had heard him adapt whenever he was faced with a medical case. He'd told her years ago it was his way of slowing his mind to take in the whole picture, not just the injury or the fever. If he didn't, he'd told her, I can miss some important details, a secondary wound that might even be more life-threatening, or an infected cut on a foot that might be the cause of the fever. It was that same thinking that had caused her to examine the boy's head as well as the cut from the horse's hoof. But sometimes his intentionally slow approach to a crisis, unnerved her - like now.
"He's the wagon driver from the silver fields, Zack Clark." The man's voice was husky, and Kat assumed from his obvious concern that he knew the injured man well.
"We found him when we went searching after the wagon was late arriving at Smith's Ferry. He was just lying there in the road where they left him. The wagon with the cash box was taken, and they just left him there to bleed to death." Kat could see the man's simmering rage contort his face.
"The guard's gone. Don't know if he was part of it or not. Name was Tom, new man." Gabe rubbed a bloody hand across his face after he and Nathaniel lifted his friend onto the table.
Her father had pulled on his apron, already cutting the man's clothing from the wound. He spoke to Gabe as he did. "Why don't you make yourself some coffee and go sit down in the kitchen. You look worn out."
Kat hadn't wasted time and in those few minutes had started water boiling on the cook stove and was now gathering the necessary instruments from her father's cabinets. She stepped to his side with a tray containing an assortment. She watched him, keeping her tongue, while he concentrated on his examination.
Nathaniel spoke while he worked. "Looks like the bullet went clear through. That's good. I can't see any damage to the vital organs." He stepped aside, nodding to Kat. "What do you think?"
She leaned in, but in the dim light it was difficult to determine if her father was correct. Picking up a second lamp, she handed it to her father. "Here, Papa, hold this for me." It was hard not to compare the poor facilities her father had to work with against those of the modern hospital she'd just left. Surgeries there were well lit, most even had replaced gas lights with Mr. Edison's amazing electric bulbs. What a difference!
Again, she bent over the man's chest, probing gently. Assuming that he was beyond feeling any further discomfort, she used the scalpel to cut a small incision effectively widening the point of the bullet entry. "Closer, Papa."
Nathaniel moved the light to above her shoulder. Gently she pulled the tissue away from the wound.
"I think there must be something else going on. We need to take a look before we stitch this closed, don't you agree?" Kat glanced up at her father.
Nathaniel stepped closer, handing the lamp to Kat. He frowned. "I think you may be right. Couldn't see it. Think there's some foreign matter there, could be a portion of his shirt."
Kat quickly retrieved the bottle of carbolic acid and clean cloths from the shelf. She scowled as she soaked the cloth. As thoroughly as she could, she applied it around the wound and a good deal beyond. If only her father had access to a machine like the one they had used in the hospital to cleanse the entire area. She shivered at the memory of the lectures she'd heard about the results of primitive frontier operations without such modern equipment. As much as her father kept up with modern treatments through journals and newly published books, he could ill afford the equipment common now in eastern practices. At least he could begin to stock some of the more recent vaccines. But that was a topic for later discussion.
A small bone fragment and piece of the man's shirt was removed from the man's chest before Nathaniel asked Kat to close the wound. She knew her father took pride in his record as a physician. His surgeries were clean.
Kat touched Gabe's knee, causing the weary man to wake with a start. "We think your friend is going to be all right."
The man looked at Nathaniel for confirmation. "You sure?"
"No, Gabe, I'm not."
Kat looked up sharply. That wasn't the kind of response she'd been taught to give at the hospital.
Nathaniel smiled as he placed his hand on Gabe's shoulder. "But I think he has a very good chance."
"Thanks, Doc." Gabe stood and entered the surgery to see for himself that his friend was still breathing.
"You know, you can thank my daughter as well, the other Dr. Meriwether. She saw something I missed."
"No, Dr. Meriwether," Kat said. "I'm confident you would have found it."
Her father gave her a weary smile. "Modesty doesn't marry well to medicine, Doctor."
Gabe's face grew dark, his brows lowered over eyes that had become narrow slits. "We gotta find a way to stop these robberies! This is the third time they've hit the wagon. That posse the sheriff has put together don't do a spit of good." He slapped his leg with his hat, causing a cloud of dust to sift about him.
"The town has a sheriff? When did we have to hire a sheriff? We've never had that kind of trouble." Kat's face reflected her surprise and disapproval.
"The town is growing, hon. We've had more trouble since the silver strike in the mountains north above the Salmon," Nathaniel explained. "But I have to agree with you. They haven't managed to catch anyone."
"Hall and his posse ain't worth the nickel in them badges they wear," Gabe spat back. "All that switching trails from one side of the mountain to the other, hasn't done a lick of good."
Kat remembered the pale-eyed Hall she'd met that morning. Surely, he wasn't the one they spoke of. "Are you talking about Ethan Hall?"
Nathaniel looked at Kat in surprise. "You know him?"
"I . . . bumped into him today at the store," she said.
"Well, he's not the sheriff, but he's his son and part of the so-called posse. The sheriff is Gilford Hall."
Gabe slammed his hat on his head and opened the door, but stopped in the doorway, turned and tipped his hat to Kat. "Thanks, Dr. Meriwether."
"You're welcome. We'll let you know when your friend is out of the woods." She closed the door behind him and turned to her father.
"So, when did the town hire a sheriff, Papa? When did all this trouble start?"
Nathaniel walked to the stove, poured a cup of tepid coffee and handed it to Kat. She shook her head, still puzzling over this new revelation.
He took a sip, wrinkling his nose as he did. "Gilford Hall came to town about a year ago, right after the silver discovery." Pulling back a chair, he sat heavily, running fingers through his tangled gray hair.
"So, was he elected or hired from somewhere else?" Kat asked.
"No, nothing that formal. He's really more like a vigilante in my opinion, who just calls himself sheriff. But when the robberies started, well people around here just let him be. It started with robberies in the camps up north. Then it spread to the wagon attacks."
"So, what else does he do here? Does he run a store? A ranch? Surely, there isn't enough criminal activity here to keep him busy," Kat asked.
Nathaniel shook his head. "No. But he built himself a very nice house up in the foothills north of town."
Kat scowled. "I don't like it!"
"You aren't alone in that." He downed the rest of his coffee, rising stiffly to his feet. He seemed reluctant to discuss it any further, whether from fatigue or frustration, she didn't know.
"I'm going back to bed. You going to sit with our patient while I catch a few hours of sleep?"
"Sure, Papa."
Before turning to his room, he leaned over and kissed her cheek. "Things have changed a bit." He gave her a weary smile. "See you in the morning."
Pulling a blanket from her bed, she made a comfortable nest by the wood stove where she could watch over her patient through the open door. She pulled the blanket tight around her shoulders, opening the book she'd been trying to read for the past week. After reading the same paragraph for the fifth time, still not aware of who had done what to who, she put it aside.
She pulled her knees close to her chest, wrapping her arms about them.
What was happening to her little town of Snowberry? Whatever it was, she wasn't pleased to see it changing the town she'd held close to her heart these past years. She was pleased with the signs of growth and prosperity. But the violence, well that just wasn't acceptable!
Chapter 5
