At about five that afternoon, about the same time that Blake and his travelers were sitting down to stew and cornbread, Doc Morelli stopped by Cohen’s Hardware. He wanted to check on Rachael Cohen, and perhaps change her bandages if need be.
He found her—and her boys—still tucked into the store’s first-floor storage room. Saul, she told him, was somewhere up on the wall.
She was doing well, very well, in fact, for having just lost a baby after a difficult delivery. Perhaps it was her good spirits and her faith in her husband that kept her going. Surely the constant sounds of shouting and gunfire couldn’t be doing her any good.
With this in mind, he left her with a paper filled with sleeping powders. “Take half of this if you need it,” he said as he handed it to her. “And the other half’s for later. It’ll make you sleep.”
She took the paper, but set it on the bed stand without looking at it. “Thank you, Dr. Morelli, but I’d rather stay awake to worry about my husband. And watch these naughty boys of mine.” She smiled thinly.
“I just saw Saul,” said Morelli with a nod. “He’s a very brave man, Rachael.”
“Thank you,” she murmured. “I know.”
He stood up and lifted his medical bag. “If there’s nothing else then, I’m needed back at the hospital. The livery stables, I should say.” Casualties were growing by the hour, and he only took comfort in the fact that the afternoon was almost over and that night would soon be upon them.
“Thank you for stopping by,” Rachael said again. “My prayers are with the fighting men.”
“And I’m certain they’re appreciating them, ma’am,” he replied as he let himself out into the store.
Once he was outside, he was pleased to see that the gates still held, and also happy to hear that the incidence of gunfire seemed to have slackened off. As had the number of stray arrows and spears sailing over the stockade.
Were the Indians backing off for the day already? It seemed too early, but if they wanted to take the time off, he was more than happy to grant it to them.
Although his primary objective was the stable, he dropped his bag inside the door. Then he made his way around the building and up to the scaffolding on the interior of the stockade.
Carefully, he inched his way around the bodies of the men still fighting as he moved toward Saul Cohen.
“Dr. Morelli?” Saul said, surprised. “Is it my Rachael? Is something—”
“No, no, Saul, nothing’s wrong.”
Saul signaled to him, and they both crouched down below the jagged opening of hand-hewn spikes at the top of the stockade. “You’ve seen her then?” Saul asked.
“Yes, and she’s doing quite well. I left some sleeping powder with her, which she refused to take. I gather she’d rather worry about you.”
Saul ducked his head and chuckled.
“Tonight, you make sure she takes a dose, all right?” said Morelli. “She needs the sleep.”
Saul nodded in the affirmative. “I will be certain.”
“Is it just my imagination, or are the Indians actually going away?”
Saul shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, Doctor. For all I know, they may be planning to sing us to sleep, then sneak in and murder us all with the coda.”
Saul had lost Morelli somewhere along the way, but he nodded just the same and said, “I’ve got to see to the men in the livery now, Saul. Take care of yourself.”
The doctor turned and carefully made his way back to the ladder.
Jenny hugged the stockade to allow the doctor to pass, and Megan did the same. When he disappeared down the ladder, Jenny said, “What do you think they’re up to? I haven’t had a decent target in over ten minutes. You don’t think they’re actually…quitting?”
“You mean turning tail? Heading for the hills?” Megan sneered. “Hardly. I mean, there’s still some light left to die by!”
“But then again, Jason always says that you can’t outguess an Apache,” Jenny muttered.
Megan sighed. “He’s right about that, I’d say.”
Jenny looked at her flatly, her pent-up anger at last finding an escape. “You said it was right that I marry your brother, too.”
“That was a long time ago,” Megan snapped, but then thought better of it. “Sorry, Jen. It was just that you seemed, I mean, the both of you seemed…Things were different.”
“I think they just seemed different.” Jenny stood higher and took another peek over the stockade. There were no Apache in sight right now. She ducked back down and plucked nervously at the bandage on her wrist.
“I think that Matt just made things seem different because he wanted to marry me,” she said. “And not for my sake. I think he just wanted to show my brother that he could do whatever he wished, you know?”
Megan remained silent.
“And he surely showed him, didn’t he?” Jenny added with a shake of her head.
“Don’t beat yourself up over it, baby,” Megan said kindly. “You were young and in love. People have done far worse things for only one of those reasons.”
“But not here and not now, and not to my brother,” Jenny replied. “I do love Jason, Megan. Love him more than anything or anyone else. He’s my blood.”
Megan knew exactly what she meant, but kept it to herself.
Instead, she said, “Jason’s your brother, Jenny. Of course you care for him. But it’s different when it’s somebody else. Somebody like Matt. Oh, rats,” she swore softly, her cheeks flushed beneath the freckles. “Well, you know what I mean. How’s your wrist?”
“Fine, thanks. Smarts a little, but what can a person expect?” Jenny stared at the plank under her feet. “I’ll make it up to Jason somehow. Somehow, I promise I will.”
Megan cocked her fist against her hip. “And you’ll leave me to clean up after Matt?”
Jenny couldn’t help but laugh. “Clean up after him? He’s housebroken at least!”
Megan sniffed. “Barely.”
On both sides of them, men were climbing or skidding down the ladders. They’d given up on Indian-fighting for the evening, it seemed. But the girls held their posts, if only because of the conversation in which they were engaged.
Jenny sobered a little. “Megan, I’m sorry. I’m sorry because he’s your brother, and I know I shouldn’t speak ill of him in front of you.”
But Megan only waved a hand. “Speak ill all you want. He’s a rotten sonofabitch, and I know it. It’s just the way things are.”
“Megan!”
“Oh, Jenny. You sound like you’re surprised. You’ve heard us fight. You’ve heard me call him far worse, and to his face.”
Jenny had.
But still, she thought there must be love behind it. She and Jason had argued, too, although not so fiercely as the MacDonald siblings, but there was always love behind it. And no matter what Megan said, she’d never believe that she didn’t really, down deep, love her very own brother.
“All right, Megan,” she said softly, hoping to end the conversation. For the present anyway.
“You’re not getting off that easy, Jenny,” Megan said, although there was a hint of a smile on her wide lips. She rose up, glanced out through the stockade spikes, then said, “We’ll talk about this later, but right now, I want to get myself a—”
Out of nowhere, an Apache arrow sank into her neck. She toppled from the stockade.
“Megan!” sobbed Jenny, rushing down the ladder after her fallen friend. “Megan! Help! Dr. Morelli!”
Over at the jail, Jason was just coming to.
The first thing he noticed was that Matt MacDonald was sleeping, judging by the soft, rhythmic snores coming from the next cell. The second thing he noticed was that his shoulder hurt. Not much, but enough that he felt a sharp, smarting pinch when he tried to sit up. And he seemed to have been bandaged by a one-armed, near sighted monkey. With his blanket!
Or at least, pieces of it.
He managed to swing himself up into a sitting position, then lever himself up to stand. None of it was easy, considering how he was wrapped up. As soon as he found his hat, he was going to find Doc Morelli and let him sort it out.
He had his hat on and was clear out the door before he realized that the sound of gunfire was distinctly absent from the air. That stopped him in his tracks.
Also, the men from the wagons circling the town square were gathered around the big campfire where Olympia Morelli, bless her heart, was overseeing the turning of a big spit on which was skewered a sizzling side of beef.
Rollie Biggston, still swathed in bandages, was open for business and standing out in the street, hawking his wares to the crowd. Abigail Krimp could be seen through the windows, behind the bar, dressed in bright blue shiny satin, pulling and serving drinks as fast as she could to the wall-to-wall crowd.
It wasn’t quite dark, yet there was no one up on the walls that he could see. No sounds of gunfire, no signs of flying arrows or Apache trying to climb the walls or set the stockade on fire.
Something was wrong.
But he didn’t have time to think about it, because just then he heard his name shouted frantically. Doc Morelli shouted again and waved at him from the livery.
He took off at a dead run, and reached Morelli’s side in a matter of seconds. “What is it?” he panted. “What’s wrong?”
Jenny burst from behind the doctor and threw her arms about Jason. “It’s my fault, my fault, Jason,” she sobbed into his chest.
“No, it isn’t, Jenny,” said Morelli before his eyes flicked to Jason’s. “It’s Megan. She’s hurt.”
Carefully but purposefully, Jason peeled Jenny from his chest and moved past her, following Morelli back through the stable. There, on a small white cot, lay his girl. Her neck was bandaged, and the bandages were soaked with blood and fluid.
His legs suddenly felt like jelly, and he sat down on the edge of her cot without willing it. “Megan,” he whispered. “Megan…” He lifted her hand to his lips and brushed a kiss over it. She didn’t wake.
He lifted his gaze to Morelli. “Will she…I mean, is she going to…” He couldn’t say it, couldn’t verbalize it. It was too important a question for anyone to ask.
But apparently not too difficult to answer. Morelli said, “Hard to tell right now, but I think she’ll make it, Jason. She’s as hard to kill as you are. And don’t even think about going anywhere until I get a chance to take those old wool bandages off you, take a good look and clean the wound, and then get you wrapped in some good, clean cotton swathing.”
“Right,” Jason said softly. He had eyes for no one but Megan right now, and no feelings except those for Megan and the girl who clung to his side. His little Jenny, his little sister.
How had everything turned out so wrong? Why did his father have to die not even halfway here, the victim of a Comanche arrow? Why did they have to settle here, in what appeared to be Apache and bandit country?
And why did Matt’s father have to be the one to tumble down a mountainside to his death, when it could just as easily have been Matt? Jason figured that old Hamish wouldn’t have been nearly as much trouble to contend with as his spoiled son.
Course, things always worked out better in hindsight, didn’t they?
Eventually, Dr. Morelli wheeled over a makeshift cart with bandages and ointments and so on, and began to go to work on Jason’s wound, such as it was. “Hardly grazed you,” the doctor said, and Jason was glad.
He unwrapped a good half-blanket’s worth of dressing from Jason’s shoulder—which Jason had to admit made moving much easier.
Then he made Jason take off his vest and shirt—cut full of holes though they were—so that he could carefully wash and medicate his wound.
Then he rebandaged Jason with a quarter of the material he’d been originally strapped with. This time, however, the dressing was soft, clean, cotton bandages instead of the scratchy wool stuff.
And lastly, despite Jason’s rather vigorous protests to the contrary, Doc gave him a dose of laudanum, putting him down for the count.