September 2012 BB Challenge words: Camel; Spit; Race; Salt; Freight

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9

Hoss was scared as he’d ever been for both of his brothers. Joe was so cold he wasn’t even shivering, and Adam…. Hoss didn’t dare go after that bullet in Adam’s chest. He could tell it had broken a rib going in, but where was it now? What if it damaged Adam’s lung, or even his heart? Or—God help him—what if Hoss damaged either, trying to do a careless surgery?

Watching the piece of cloth under his hand growing redder by the second, he felt hope bleeding out of his own self right along with the life bleeding out of his brother.

“You said the words, but you don’t believe them.” Simon’s voice behind him surprised Hoss as much as the man’s words confused him.

“What are you talkin’ about?” he asked absently.

“You told him they would both be fine.”

Hoss stiffened and turned to face Simon. The furs on the floor caught his eye, pulling his gaze instead to Little Joe, lying near the stove. “They’d better be.” Joe was so bundled up under Simon’s furs, Hoss could not see all the burns and cuts and bruises that had turned his stomach earlier…but he knew they were there; and they would need salves and medicines and he didn’t know what else to heal properly. “The nearest doctor’s hours away, even if we could catch that stage you were talkin’ about.”

Simon followed his gaze. “It will take time for Little Joe….” He glanced over to Hoss, earning a small nod to confirm he’d said the name correctly, and then added, “to warm enough for his wounds to be treated.”

“Maybe.” Though he was torn by his need to help both brothers, Hoss knew Adam needed it more at that moment. Frustrated, he turned away from Joe to focus all of his attention on Adam. “But maybe Adam ain’t got that kind of time.”

“Keep him cold.”

“What?”

“It will help to give him the time needed for me to find that doctor.”

“How you gonna reach him? Sheriff said the horses can’t hardly get their footing in all that snow and wet ice out there.”

“I won’t have need of a horse.”

“You gonna walk all that way? Stage’ll be long gone before you get close.”

“If horses ‘can’t hardly get their footing,’ that stagecoach won’t be moving either.”

“Yeah.” Hoss sighed. “Yeah, I reckon you’re right.”

“Faith is powerful medicine. Believe your own words. You might just help to make them true.”

Faith, huh? Could Hoss find enough faith? One man wasn’t much likely to win a foot race against the grim reaper. With that reaper squeezing on Adam’s heart…and the one they had racing against him a stranger who didn’t owe anything at all to Hoss or his brothers…Well, faith and belief were about all Hoss had to go on.

Praying that stagecoach was a whole lot closer than he thought, and that he wasn’t putting too much unfounded faith in a man he’d barely met, Hoss gave Simon a curt nod in appreciation; and then he returned to his efforts at keeping Adam’s blood where it belonged.

XxXxX

Simon was about to step outside when a raw voice pulled his attention back to the chair where Hoss’s young brother had previously been bound.

“Faith ain’t worth a drop of whiskey,” Chet Schultz called after him. The only other Schultz brother, aside from Buford, to have remained unharmed in the aftermath of the Cartwright’s raid had been tied hand and foot just as Little Joe had earlier, sitting in the same chair where the youngest Cartwright brother had been tortured. Its seat was still wet with water, blood…and urine. “Any man worth his salt,” Chet went on, “knows he can’t count on nothin’ and no one but hisself.”

Not bothering to turn around, Simon looked out through the open door to see Chet’s youngest brother, Buford, helping the second youngest, Beau, to his feet. The sheriff had already assured them the oldest Schultz brother, Jasper, was as dead as Buck. Simon wished he could have the chance to send Chet along to join them.

He took in a long pull of the frosty air before turning to respond, and then crossed slowly over to the chair. Passing Hoss, who was still hunched down over Adam, Simon kept his eyes further ahead, on the fur-bundled Little Joe. He wasn’t ready to meet Chet’s gaze just yet. He had to make that meeting count. With each step he took, with each creak of every board beneath his feet, Simon allowed other names to fill his thoughts, the names of other men—and women—who had been tormented, tortured, murdered at the hands of a clan of devils who should never have been made to walk the earth among men.

When he reached the chair, he took in another long breath, this one tainted by odors stirred up by the devils’ deeds. And then he eased himself down to his haunches until he could face Chet Schultz eye-to-eye.

He stared at the man for a long moment, waiting until Chet’s eyes began to dance nervously about. And then, as calm as could be, Simon gave Chet a small lesson in humanity.

“Any man worth his salt,” he said, “knows faith is something no real value can ever be put to. And men like you…and your dead brothers, Buck and Jasper…and your dead pa, are not worth the spit it would take to scrape you off the bottom of a preacher’s boots, let alone a single—drop—of whiskey.”

Chet looked back at him with a mixture of anger and confusion. He did not understand. He lacked the humanity to understand.

“I ought to just kill you,” Simon added, satisfied to see Chet’s eyes go wide with fear at the implied threat, “like you killed all those folks between Arkansas and here.” He lifted his chin toward Little Joe, and then cocked his head toward Adam. “Like you tried to kill these good folks.”

“That one killed our pa!” Chet argued, indicating Little Joe with a jerk of his head. “And besides, weren’t me what done any of it. Was Jasper and Buck.”

“Mister,” Sheriff Coffee’s voice called in from the doorway, “I heard you tell that brother of yours to shoot Little Joe. Now, in my book that makes you a part of all of it. I’ll bet you even fired off some of them shots that killed Dusty McGraw.”

“All’s we did was knick him some!”

“He’s dead on account of all them knicks!” the sheriff shouted.

“Weren’t my doin’! I swear it weren’t!”

“He’s nothin’ but a coward,” Hoss added softly. “Don’t waste your time on him. My brothers need a doctor. That’s all that matters right now.”

Simon glared at Chet for a moment longer. When he rose, he did not like the smug look that crossed that devil’s face. The man thinks he won that round. To prove he hadn’t won anything at all, Simon hit him hard enough to drop the chair—with him in it. And then Simon stepped outside to prepare for his journey, intent on fetching that doctor.

XxXxX

Doctor Reginald P. Edmonds was a man of faith. A prominent physician in Philadelphia for nearly twenty years, he had faith in his skills as a surgeon, as did the senator who had called him to this desolate country to help his youngest boy. But the good doctor also had faith in God’s will; and God did not always will it that Dr. Edmonds would save—or even reach—every patient. Today, God’s will was preventing him from reaching that senator’s son.

There was no point to complaining about the delay that kept him and his fellow travelers trapped in a homesteader’s cabin near the road. God chose to make that road impassible…for the moment. And what a breathtaking moment it was when an unexpected beam of sunlight slipped through a corner of the frosted window, escaping into the room in a tiny rainbow that caused the homesteader’s young daughter to shriek in such delight the doctor could not help but laugh.

Soon everyone moved to the door to see that the storm had truly come to an end. And suddenly, Dr. Edmonds found himself standing in a crust of icy snow, shivering in the cold and yet oblivious to any discomfort. Through puffs of gray clouds, the sun cascaded downward in a handful of wide rays that painted glistening patches over frosted pines and spilled a field of shimmering diamonds across the road.

When the young girl shrieked again, this time in fear, the doctor reluctantly moved his gaze from the glorious vista to the cause of the child’s hysterics: a beast lumbering up the road toward them. However, that beast very quickly became recognizable as nothing more than a very large man in snowshoes.

As the stranger drew closer, Dr. Edmonds was quick to recognize him as Simon Bullnose Walker. The large man with the odd name had interrupted a rather unpleasant meal at the last way station with an even more unpleasant warning about a clan of outlaws. The stories he’d told of the outlaws’ atrocities had left even the doctor squeamish enough to abandon the meal altogether.

Clearly, Mr. Walker likewise recognized Dr. Edmonds, for he quickly locked his eyes on the good doctor. It was enough to make Reginald believe this second meeting had been the reason God had stopped his journey at this particular place.

“You need to come with me,” Walker said.

“The outlaws you spoke of?” Dr. Edmonds began to consider how horrific the situation must be, to send a man alone, afoot, into such daunting traveling conditions.

Walker answered with a nod. “They attacked two men.”

“What is the nature of their injuries?”

Delaying his answer, Walker looked toward the homesteader’s daughter, who was watching him with rapt interest, her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open. “One has been shot,” he said then, returning his attention to Reginald. “A rib is broken. The bullet is still in him.”

“And the other?”

Walker glanced again at the girl before giving his head a small shake.

Surely the second man’s injury was too brutal for the child to hear. Dr. Edmonds cleared his throat to break the awkward silence. “Well, then, we had better get moving. How far must we travel?”

“It is only a few miles.”

“A few miles? In all this snow and ice? Heavens. Well…I’ll be warm enough, I suppose, in my camel hair coat. Of course, I’ve never walked in those contraptions.” He looked to the massive snowshoes on Walker’s feet; and then gave Walker a resigned smile. “Nonetheless, I am game to try.”

“I will carry you.”

“Nonsense! You are not a packhorse; and I, quite frankly, am not a pack!”

“We must hurry. You will move too slowly. I will carry you,” he repeated.

“No need for none of that!” the homesteader interceded. “My dogs’ll take you! Get you there quick, too!”

“Dogs?” asked the doctor.

“They’re sled dogs. Used to haulin’ small freight way up north a’here. Them dogs can handle the two a’you just fine, with me drivin’.”

Dr. Edmonds was both intrigued and delighted. Game or not, he had not been particularly eager to take a miles long hike in snowshoes. Mr. Walker, however, appeared to be a bit perplexed.

But when they saw that the homesteader’s dogs looked frighteningly like wolves, and those wolf-like dogs cavorted about as though they were eager to be harnessed to the sled, it was the doctor who became perplexed while Mr. Walker became intrigued.

“God’s will,” the doctor told himself quietly. “He surely does work in mysterious ways.”

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