Whirlwind Wedding

She turned, her hands trembling on the stock. “Do you know how to use this?”

He nodded.

“Take it and go for Dr. Butler.”

“Okay. Moe’s fast—”

“No.” The Ranger had said the outlaws were near. Until she knew where the McDougals were, she had to be careful. She didn’t want Andrew taking any chances by getting their horse from the barn, where any or all of the gang might be hiding. “Take the Ranger’s horse and don’t disappear. Come straight back.”

The boy rushed to his room and returned wearing his brown homespun trousers and buttoning the placket of a brown-and-white checked shirt. He stomped his feet into his worn shoes. At the door, he took the gun. “I’ll hurry.”

“Good.” She began to roll up the sleeves of her plain white bodice.

“What will you do?”

“See if I can stop the bleeding.”

He grimaced and disappeared into the night. His shoes scudded across the porch, then silence fell. Unease at being alone with the man tightened her shoulders, but she calmed herself by observing that he was unconscious. He couldn’t hurt her.

Catherine knelt again, dragged in a deep, steadying breath and unfastened his pants. Her hands trembled so badly it was difficult to tug the heavy material down his hips. She abandoned that, fearing he might die before the doctor arrived. Picking up the scissors, she cut at the denim just below the rip so she could press her hand fully against the wound on the inside of his thigh.

She dipped the rag in water again and gently cleaned away more dried blood. Fresh crimson seeped out and she applied firm pressure.

He was lean and hard and his body burned with fever. Even in the pale light she could see the angry red of infection around the wound before fresh blood covered it again.

Maybe it was the fact that her mother had been buried two days before she’d arrived, but Catherine was determined that no more death would happen in this house so soon.

She kept the cloth in place, pressing with her hands. She closed her eyes, praying Andrew would reach Fort Greer and the doctor in record time.

When a rough, callused hand grabbed hers, her eyes flew open. Her stomach dipped to her knees as she stared into his pain-filled silver eyes. Then they closed.

“Hurts,” her patient croaked.

“Yes,” she murmured soothingly, telling herself to stroke his brow as she’d done to so many patients these last few years. But she couldn’t.

Something about this man’s voice, or maybe his touch, shook her inside, setting off a spark of fear mixed with an anticipation she didn’t understand.

His hand went limp and she stared at his pale, whiskered face. Relief eased out in a long breath. Hurry, Doctor.

Half an hour later, Dr. Butler helped get the man into her bed. The Ranger was so tall his booted feet hung off the end, so they laid him at an angle.

After examining the patient, the doctor turned to her, compassion in his tired brown eyes. “He’s lucky he ended up on your doorstep. Not everyone has your skill at nursing.”

Thanks to the nuns who’d raised her. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“I don’t expect him to make it. There’s a lot of tissue damage, possibly nerve damage, as well. Infection has already started and he may have gotten help too late. Looks like he was shot twice in the leg, so I’m going to check and make sure there are no bullets left inside. My poking around can’t make things any worse for him.”

She nodded, hoping he was wrong about the stranger dying. Maybe this Texas Ranger was as tough on the inside as he looked on the outside. “I’ll heat some water and get some soap for you to wash your hands.”

“I’ll need your help.”

“All right.” She stepped out of the room and wrapped a cloth around her hand, reaching into the stove for one of the brick pieces she kept inside. She dropped it into a bowl, which she pumped full of water, then scooped up a tin of lye soap and carried everything back into the bedroom.

In the two weeks she’d worked for Dr. Butler at the fort, her aid had been confined to helping deliver babies and stitching the toe of a little boy who’d cut himself with his daddy’s ax. But during her work with the nuns, she had assisted in surgery a few times.

After the doctor washed his hands, he removed the blood-soaked pad Catherine had placed on the Ranger’s thigh. Dr. Butler’s fingers probed the gaping exit wound. Catherine looked away, took a quick steadying breath, then stepped up beside him. She wet a folded square of linen with the carbolic acid Dr. Butler sometimes used for sterilizing wounds.

He cleaned around and inside the wound, then Catherine handed him a pair of forceps. He located a bullet quickly, but it took several minutes to dig it out. Though still unconscious, the Ranger moaned. This time Catherine reached up to stroke his brow.

Finally, Dr. Butler dropped the bullet into the soap tin’s lid. The ping sounded sharply in the quiet room. “There’s just the one. Looks like the other one in his leg and the one in his arm went on out.”

With one hand, Catherine held the lamp for the doctor and with her other she continued to stroke the Ranger’s forehead. His skin was flushed and burned her palm.

She counted each of the twenty-seven stitches it took to close the wound. She knew the danger lay in how deep the injury had gone, the degree of infection and the risk of the man ripping open his stitches.

Dr. Butler cleaned the wound again. He washed his hands, then, as he stared down at the patient, dried them on the fresh cloth she’d laid on the bedside table. “I fully expect he’ll go, Catherine.”

“Maybe not.” She could only think that her fervent desire for the man to live was due to the fact that her mother had died so recently. “He could pull through.”

“Maybe.” The doctor looked doubtful. “I’ll leave some laudanum in case he wakes up at all.” He placed a small brown bottle on the washstand next to the bed. “That will ease his suffering. Just try to make him comfortable. I’ll check back tomorrow.”

Catherine nodded, then glanced at her bed. Even unconscious, Jericho Blue made her leery. She didn’t care to have the big man under her roof for a prolonged period, but whatever her intention when she’d answered the door, she wasn’t getting rid of this man tonight.

Chapter Two

D arkness shifted into light. Day into night. Jericho was swept along on a vicious red tide of pain. He burned, then froze. Searing agony gripped his leg and throbbed in his arm. Images floated through his mind. The face of his partner, Hays. A dark-haired boy. A woman with a soft voice and gentle hands that soothed his blistered flesh. He rocked on the ebb and flow of hurt before sliding into sweet surrender.

Something woke him. Pain or the light spilling through the window?

He struggled to open his eyes against the glare of the sun, awareness trickling back. A sharp ache pierced his skull. His right leg felt as if it were on fire. And he was naked. He didn’t recognize the soft bed that held the clean, comforting scent of a woman. His gaze tracked from the right, noting a tall, dark-wood wardrobe in the middle of the wall, an open door, a small dressing table, a stand to his left holding a pitcher and washbasin. None of it was familiar. The window stood open a few inches to let in fresh, warm air, and a lacy curtain fluttered there. He was in someone’s house.

He sorted through the blur of memories in his head. The ambush outside of Whirlwind, a young boy shooting with the McDougal gang. Bullets tearing through his arm and leg. His partner’s scream of surprise. Hays Gentry had been dead by the time Jericho dragged his own lead-riddled carcass over to his side.

Using a length of rope from his saddlebag, he had fashioned a tourniquet for his thigh. He had wrapped a bandanna around his bleeding arm, then clumsily secured his lanky partner onto Hays’s dun mare, and trailed the McDougal gang as far as he could while the tracks were fresh. Hours later, he’d lost them and returned to the scene of the ambush, picking up a single set of hoofprints. Hoofprints that had led him here.

His gaze shot to the open doorway and he tried to sit up. Agony clawed through his lower body and he cursed. Easing down, he panted with the effort not to cry out. A clean white bandage wrapped his right wrist up to the middle of his forearm.

He recalled waking a couple of times and a woman holding a cup of cool water to his lips. Cool dampness on his forehead and chest. He’d been shot in his gun arm. And his right leg. With his left hand, he weakly patted his way across the sheet and felt the bulk of bandages beneath.

His thigh was wrapped tightly and throbbing as if a coyote had made two meals out of it.

“Sir?” The sweet, lilting voice was tentative. The speaker sounded breathless, as if she’d hurried to him. “Oh, good. I thought I heard you.”

Jericho struggled to focus on the figure in the open doorway. Her voice. “You helped me.”

“Yes.” She moved toward him, concern drawing her finely arched brows together.

Sweat stung his eyes and he blinked. She was pretty. More than pretty. Was he conscious? Her long black hair was pulled back with a white kerchief and flowed over one shoulder like ebony silk. He registered strong features and porcelain skin before his vision hazed. She leaned over him, smelling of sunshine and soap. A low humming sounded in his ears. She was talking.