Her Healing Ways

Lon looked at him coolly. “If you don’t want me to deal, you deal.” He began shuffling the cards with rapid and practiced hands. The men standing around liked to watch someone who could handle cards as well as he could. He didn’t hold back, letting the cards cascade from one hand to the other and then deftly working the cards like an accordion. He held his audience in rapt attention.

The young Métis who’d lost his gambling money rose, and another man slid into his place. Lon nodded to him and began dealing cards for another game. One of the saloon girls came over and tried to drape herself around Lon’s shoulders. Not wishing to be impolite, he murmured, “Not while I’m working, please, miss.” She nodded and moved over to lean on the dark-haired miner.

Lon hoped she would sweeten the man’s temper but the miner shrugged her off with a muttered insult. Lon looked at the cards he’d dealt himself and nearly revealed his shock. He held almost a royal flush: jack, queen, king, ace and a four.

The odds of his dealing this hand to himself were incredible. The other players turned cards facedown and he dealt them the number of cards they requested. Lon put the four down and drew another card. He stared at it, disbelieving.

The betting began. Lon resisted the temptation to bet the rest of his money on the game. That would signal to the other players that he had good cards, which in this case was a vast understatement. He bet half the money he had just won. The other players eyed him and each raised. The second round of betting took place. Then Lon concealed his excitement and laid out the royal flush—ten, jack, queen, king, ace.

He reached forward to scoop up the pot. The small man leaped from his seat, shouting, “You can’t have dealt honestly. No one gets a royal flush like that!”

Lon eyed the man. He’d played cards several times with him over the past days, and the man had been consistently even-tempered.

“You’re right!” The dark-haired miner reared up from his chair and slammed a fist into Lon’s face. Lon flew back into the men crowding around the table. He tried to find his feet, but he went down hard on one knee. He leaped up again, his fists in front of his face.

The gold and silver coins he’d just won were clinking, sliding down the table as the miner tipped it over. “No!” Lon bellowed. “No!”

The miner swung again. Lon dodged, getting in two good jabs. The miner groaned and fell. Then the small mustached man pulled a knife from his boot.

A knife. Lon leaped out of reach again. He fumbled for the Derringer in his vest. The small man jumped over the upended table. He plunged his knife into Lon just above the high pocket of his vest.

As his own warm blood gushed under his hand, Lon felt himself losing consciousness. The crushing pain in his chest made it hard to breathe. He looked at the man nearest him, a stranger. He was alone in this town of strangers.

No, I’m not.

Lon blinked, trying to get rid of the fog that was obscuring his vision. “Get the woman doctor,” he gasped. “Get Dr. Gabriel.”

Chapter Four

Pounding. Pounding. Mercy woke in the darkness, groggy. More sights and sounds roused her—the sound of a match striking, a candle flame flickering to life, padding footsteps going toward the curtains. “Aunt Mercy, get up,” Indigo commanded in the blackness. “Someone’s nearly breaking down the front door and shouting for the doctor.” The curtain swished as Indigo went through it to answer the door.

Mercy sat up. Feeling around in the darkness, she started getting dressed without thinking, merely reacting to Indigo’s command. With her dress on over her nightgown, she sat down to pull on her shoes. She found she was unable to lift her stockinged feet. The listlessness which had gripped her over the past week smothered her in its grasp once more.

She had not left the mining office—in fact, could not leave it. She knew her lassitude had begun to worry Indigo. Her daughter had given her long looks of bewildered concern. Yet Mercy had been unable to reassure Indigo, had been unable to break free from the lethargy, the hopelessness, the defeat she’d experienced deep, deep inside. And somehow it had been connected with Lon Mackey, but why?

With the candle glowing in front of her face, Indigo came in with three men crowding behind her. “Aunt Mercy, Lon Mackey has been knifed in the saloon.”

Cold shock dashed its way through Mercy. As if she’d been tossed into water, she gasped and sucked in air.

“It’s serious. We must hurry.” Indigo set the candlestick on the potbellied stove and began pulling a dress on over her nightgown. Then in the shadows, she bent, opened the trunk at the end of the room and pulled out two black leather bags, one with surgical items and one with nursing supplies.

Mercy sat, watching Indigo by the flickering candlelight. Her feet were still rooted to the cold floor.

“Ain’t you gonna get up, lady—I mean, lady doctor?” one of the men asked. “The gambler’s unconscious and losing blood. He needs a doc.”

Indigo turned and snagged both their wool shawls from a nail on the wall. “Aunt Mercy?”

“Yeah,” one of the other men said, “the gambler asked for you—by name. Come on.”

He asked for me. The image of Lon bleeding snapped the tethers that bound her to the floor. Mercy stirred, forcing off the apathy. She slid her feet into her shoes and dragged herself up. “Let’s go.”

Outside for the first time in days, she shivered in the October night air, shivered at once more being outside, vulnerable. Thinking of Lon and recalling how he’d done whatever she needed, whatever she’d asked during the cholera outbreak, she hurried over the slick, muddy street toward the saloon. In the midst of the black night, oil lamps shone through the swinging door and the windows, beckoning.

The men who’d come to get them hurried forward, shouting out, “The lady doc is coming!”

Mercy and Indigo halted just outside the door. Having difficulty drawing breath, Mercy whispered, “Pray.” Indigo nodded and they entered side by side. The bright lights made Mercy blink as her eyes adjusted. Finally, she discerned where the crowd was thickest.

She headed straight toward the center of the gathering, her steps jerky, as if she were walking on frozen feet. “Nurse Indigo,” she said over her shoulder, “get the bar ready for me, please.” But a glance told her that Indigo was already disinfecting the bar in preparation.

The gawking men parted as Mercy swept forward.

One unfamiliar man popped up in front of her. “Hold it. A woman doctor? She might do him more harm than good.”

Before Mercy could respond, the dissenting man was yanked back and shoved out of her way, the men around all chorusing, “The gambler asked for her.”

Unchecked, Mercy continued, her strength coming back in spurts like the blood surging, pulsing through her arteries. Her walking smoothed out.

She had never doctored with such a large crowd pressing in on every side. She sensed the men here viewed this as a drama, a spectacle. Still, she kept her chin up. If they’d come to see the show, she’d show them all right.

Then she saw Lon. He had been stretched out on a table, a crimson stain soaking the front of his white shirt and embroidered vest. An invisible hand squeezed the breath from her lungs and it rushed out in a long “Oh.”

A young woman in a low-cut, shiny red dress was holding a folded towel over the wound. She looked into Mercy’s eyes. “This was all we had to stop the bleeding.”

Mercy nodded, drawing up her reserves. “Excellent.” She put her black bag on the table beside Lon and lifted out the bottle of wood alcohol. She poured it over both her trembling hands, hoping to quiet her nerves as she disinfected. To hide the quivering of her hands, she shook them and then balled them into fists. “Let me see the wound, please.”

The young woman lifted the blood-soaked towel and stepped back. She was the only one who did so—everyone else pressed in closer. “Please, friends,” Mercy stated in a firm tone, forcing the quavering from her voice, “I must have room to move my arms. I must have light. Please.”

The crowd edged back a couple of inches. The girl in the low-cut dress lifted a lamp closer to Lon.

Mercy wished her inner quaking would stop. She sucked in more air laden with cigar smoke, stale beer and sweat. She looked down into Lon’s face.

She had tended so many bleeding men in the war, yet her work then had been anonymous. She had never before been called to tend someone whom she knew and whom she had depended on, worked with. Seeing a friend like this must be what was upsetting her. She must focus on the wound, not the man.

In spite of her trembling fingers, Mercy unbuttoned and tugged back his shirt. She examined the wound and was relieved to see that the blood was clotting and sluggish. The wound, though deep, had not penetrated the heart or abdomen. That would have been a death sentence. Her shaking lessened. This was her job, this was what she had been called to do.

As she probed the wound, she felt a small part of the lung that may have collapsed. She had read about pulmonary atelectasis—once she closed the wound, the lung would either reinflate or compensate. But she needed to act quickly.

She turned toward the bar. “Nurse Indigo, is my operating table ready?”

“Almost, Dr. Gabriel.” While working in public, both women used these terms of address. The dean of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania had insisted on using their titles to imbue them with respect.

“Please carry the patient to the bar, and bring my bag, too,” Mercy asked of the men. “I will operate there.” Mercy turned and the way parted before her. She was accustomed to disbelief and disapproval, but never before had she been forced to endure being put on display. Her face was hot and glowing bright scarlet.

She had heard of circuses that had freak shows, displaying bearded women and other humans with physical abnormalities. Here she was the local freak, the lady doctor. But her concern for Lon’s survival outweighed her embarrassment and frustration. He was depending on her.

For a moment, she felt faint. She scolded herself for such weakness and plowed her way to the bar. Now Indigo was helping the bartender position the second of two large oil lamps.

“How bad is it, Doctor?” Indigo asked.