Mail Order Cowboy

“Sarah! Are you all right?” Milly asked, rushing forward to her sister, whom the other woman had gently assisted to the ground before starting to fan her face.

“Yes…I think so…everything went gray for a moment…” Sarah said. “I’m all right, really, Caroline. Help me up.”

Still pale but obviously embarrassed at her near-swoon, she scrambled to her feet.

“We’ve got to get home!” Milly cried, now that her sister was standing. Her gaze darted around until it settled on a wagon whose horses were tied at the hitching post next to his mount, then back to her sister. “Sarah, come on, let’s get you into the wagon—” She braced her sister with an arm around her waist.

Caroline said, “I’ll help you get her into the wagon and go home with you. Dan, you run down and tell Pa and the sheriff to round up the men and come out to the Matthews ranch. And bring the doctor, just in case…. Quick, now!” she added, when it seemed as if the lad would remain standing there, mouth agape.

Then Milly seemed to remember him. “Mr. Brookfield, I’m sorry…I have to go. I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to—that is, perhaps one of the other ladies…”

“Oh, but I’m coming with you,” he informed her, falling into step next to her as she and the other woman helped Sarah walk.

“Really, that’s awfully kind of you, but it’s not your trouble. There’s no telling what we’re going to find when we get there,” she told him, as if that was the end of the matter. Her eyes went back to her sister as the other woman clambered into the bed of the wagon and stretched an arm down to assist Sarah. “Careful, Sarah…”

“Which is exactly why I’m going,” Nick said. “There’s no way on earth a gentleman would allow you to ride alone into possible danger. There might be savages lying in wait.”

She looked skeptical of him and impatient to be off. “Thank you, but I’m afraid you don’t understand about our Comanche—”

He saw how she must see him, as a civilized foreigner with no real experience in fighting, and interrupted her with a gesture. “I have a brace of pistols in my saddlebags,” he said, jerking his head toward his horse. “And I know how to use them, as well as that shotgun you have mounted on the back of your wagon seat. Miss Matthews, I have served in Her Majesty’s army, and I have been tested in battle against hordes of murderous, screaming Indians—India Indians, that is—armed and out to kill me and every other Englishman they could. Let me come with you, at least until the men from town arrive.”

His words seemed to act like a dash of cold water. “A-all right,” she said, and without another word turned back to the wagon. She climbed with the graceful ease of long experience onto the seat and gathered up the reins. Before he could even mount his horse, she had backed up the wagon and snapped the reins over the horses’ backs.

Milly’s heart caught in her throat as the wagon round ed a curve and she spotted the smoke rising in an ominous gray plume over the low mesquite- and cactus-studded hill that lay between there and home. Unconsciously she pulled up on the reins and the wagon creaked to a halt in the dusty road.

“Oh, Milly, what if it’s true? What if Josh is dead? Whatever will we do?” Sarah moaned from the wagon bed behind her.

Please, God, don’t let it be true, Milly prayed. Don’t let Josh be dead. Nothing else really matters, even if they burned the house. She saw out of the corner of her eye that the Englishman had reined in his mount next to them, as had Bobby.

Braced against the side of the wagon bed, Caroline Wallace gave Sarah a one-armed hug, but she looked every bit as worried.

“We’ll deal with whatever we find,” she said grimly, fighting the urge to wheel the horses around and whip them into a gallop. What would they do, with only a boy not old enough to shave to help them run the ranch? “And the sooner we find out what that is, the better. Here, Mr. Brookfield,” she said, reaching around the slatted seat for the shotgun. “Perhaps you’d better have this at the ready.”

His eyes were full of encouraging sympathy as he leaned over to accept the firearm from her. “Steady on, Miss Matthews,” he murmured. “I’ll be with you.”

It was ridiculous to take heart from the words of a stranger, a dandified-looking Englishman who claimed to have been a soldier, but there was something very capable in his manner and comforting in his words.

“I’ll go ahead, shall I, and scout out the situation?” he suggested. “See if it’s safe for you ladies to come ahead?”

“And leave us here to be picked off? No, thank you,” she responded tartly, gesturing toward the rocky, brush-studded hills. She could picture a Comanche brave hiding behind every boulder and bush. “We’ll go together.” She clucked to the horses and the buckboard lurched forward.

She couldn’t stifle a groan of pure anguish when she rounded the curve and spotted the smoldering ruin that was the barn. Just then the wind shifted and blew toward the wagon, temporarily blinding her with smoke and stinging her eyes. Had the house been burned to ashes like the barn? Where was Josh? Or rather, Josh’s body, she corrected herself, knuckling tears away from her cheeks.

Then the wind shifted capriciously again and she saw what she hadn’t dared hope for—the house was still standing. So was the bunkhouse, which stood across from it and next to the barn. Why hadn’t they been burned, too? But the pasture beyond, in which some fifty head of cattle and a dozen horses had been grazing when they’d left for the meeting, was empty. There was no sign of the Comanche raiders except for a hawk’s feather that must have fallen from one of the braves’ hair, sticking incongruously in a rosebush by the house.

“They left Josh on t’other side a’ the barn,” Bobby whispered, as if fearing that speaking aloud would bring the Comanches back.

She couldn’t worry about the loss of the cattle right now or how they would survive. She had to see Josh.

“Caroline, stay with Sarah, please,” she said to the woman, who still crouched protectively in the bed of the buckboard by her sister.

“I say, Miss Matthews,” Nicholas Brookfield said be side her, “please allow me to go first. There’s no need to subject yourself to this if there’s nothing to be done for the chap.”

It was so tempting to accept his offer, to spare herself the sight of the old man perhaps scalped or otherwise mutilated, lying in his blood. But old Josh had been their rock ever since their father had died, and she owed him this much at least.

“No,” she said, letting her eyes speak her gratitude for his offer. “But please, come with me.”

Still holding the shotgun at the ready, he led the way around the barn.

At first, she thought the old man was dead, sprawled there in the dirt between the side of the barn and the empty corral. He was pallid as a corpse, his shirt saturated with dark dried blood. A deep gash bisected his upper forehead, dyeing his gray hair a dark crimson. A feathered shaft was embedded in each shoulder, pinning his torso to the ground, and his left pants leg was slashed midthigh. She caught a glimpse of a long, deep laceration beneath. Not far away, a corner of the barn still burned with crackling intensity. It was a miracle flying sparks hadn’t set Josh’s clothes alight.

And then she saw that Josh’s chest was rising and falling.

“Josh?” she called, softly at first, afraid to trust her eyes, then louder, “Josh?”

His answer was a groan.

She rushed past Brookfield, falling to her knees beside the fallen cowboy. “Josh, it’s me, Milly. Can you hear me?” Gingerly, she touched his face, not wanting to cause him any extra pain.

Josh’s eyelids fluttered and then he opened one eye, blinking as he attempted to focus his gaze. “Miss Milly…sorry…I caught them redskins stealin’ cattle…tried to drive ’em off with the rifle…” He squinted at the ground on his right side and sighed. “Looks like they got that, too. St-started…they started t’ take my scalp…dunno what stopped ’em from finishin’…”

“Thank God,” Milly murmured. But Josh couldn’t hear her. He’d passed out again.

“Bobby, go get me some water from the well,” Milly called over her shoulder. “And tell Sarah and Caroline to bring soap and a couple of clean sheets to make up the bed in the spare room for Josh.”

“And Bobby, bring me a couple of knives,” Brookfield called out, pulling off his black frock coat and throwing it over a fencepost in the nearby corral. He rolled up his sleeves past his elbows, revealing tanned, muscular arms. “And some whiskey if you can find it. Or any kind of liquor.”

Milly turned startled eyes to him and saw that he knelt in the dirt beside her, oblivious of his immaculate white shirt and black trousers. “Mr. Brookfield, what are you going to do?”

With his bare hands, he was digging into the dirt beside Josh’s wounded shoulder. “Before he comes around, I’m going to cut off the arrowheads. There’s no way we can pull the arrow shafts out otherwise without injuring him further.”

“Are you a doctor, Mr. Brookfield?”

He shook his head without looking at her, still digging in the dirt.

“Shouldn’t we wait ’til the doctor gets here to do that?”

He shook his head again. “You can’t even move the man to a bed until we pull out those arrows. I’ve seen the regimental doctor remove a spear from an unlucky sepoy before, if that makes you feel better.”

He didn’t explain what a sepoy was, or if the sepoy had lived through the procedure, but she didn’t have any better idea. And Dan Wallace might not find the doctor right away. They didn’t dare wait.

“I suppose you’re right—you’d better go ahead. But even if Josh comes around, we don’t have any whiskey or any other kind of spirits. Papa didn’t hold with drinking.”

“It’d be to pour on the wounds mostly, though if he regains his senses I’ll be giving him some to drink,” the Englishman answered, with that purposeful calm he’d exhibited ever since they’d received the awful news.

Just then Bobby dashed back, a pair of knives from the kitchen clutched in one hand, a half-full bottle of whiskey in the other.

Milly’s jaw dropped. “Bobby, where on earth did you get that?”