In the early afternoon, they reached the outskirts of the Winter ranch, and Lee drove them to the big old ranch house to visit the rancher’s eight-year-old daughter who was recovering from typhoid.
The little girl was perfectly fine, and Lee and Blair stayed for a cup of milk warm from the cow and an enormous chunk of corn bread.
“That’s all the pay we’ll probably get,” Lee said, as they got back into the carriage. “Doctors don’t get rich in the country. It’s good you’ll have me to support you.”
Blair started to say that she had no plans to stay in Chandler or to marry him, but something made her stop. Maybe it was the way he’d hinted that she really was a doctor, and that when—if—they were married, she would still practice medicine. And considering the prejudice and bigotry in this town, that was saying a lot.
They were barely off the rancher’s land when a cowboy rode up to them, his horse stopping on its back legs and raising a cloud of dust over them. “We need some help, Doc,” the cowboy said.
To Blair’s disbelief, Lee did not take off immediately with his usual lightning speed.
“Aren’t you from the Lazy J?”
The cowboy nodded.
“I want to take the lady back to Winter’s ranch before I go with you.”
“But, Doc, the man’s been gut shot and he’s bleedin’. He needs somebody right away.”
Yesterday, Blair would have been furious that Lee wanted to exclude her from a case, but she knew now that he wasn’t against her helping him with the patients, so it had to be something else. She put her hand on his arm. “Whatever happens, I’m in this, too. You can’t protect me.” There was a hint of threat in her voice that said that she’d follow him if he left her behind.
“They ain’t shootin’ now, Doc,” the cowboy said. “The lady’ll be safe while you patch Ben up.”
Leander glanced at Blair, then skyward. “I hope I don’t live to regret this,” he said, as he snapped the whip over the horse, and they were off.
Blair grabbed the side of the carriage and said, “Shooting?” But no one heard her.
They left the horse and carriage some distance away and the cowboy led them to the ruins of an adobe house, stuck on a steep hillside, a section of the roof fallen in.
“Where are the others?” Lee asked and looked to where the cowboy pointed through the trees toward another ruin.
Blair wanted to ask questions about what was going on, but Lee put his hand in the small of her back and pushed her forward into the ruin. When her eyes adjusted, she saw a man and a fat, dirty woman sitting on the floor below what was left of a window, rifles across their shoulders, pistols by their sides, spent shells all around them. In the corner were three horses. With her eyes wide as she looked around, she was sure that she was in the midst of something she didn’t like.
“Let’s sew him up and get out of here,” Lee said, bringing her back to the task at hand.
In the darkest part of the shack, on the floor, was a man holding his stomach with his hands, his face white.
“Do you know how to give chloroform?” Lee asked, as he sterilized his hands.
Blair nodded and began to remove bottles and candles from her bag. “Can he hold his liquor?” she asked the people in the room.
“Well, sure,” the cowboy said hesitantly, “but we don’t have no liquor. You have some?”
Blair was very patient. “I’m trying to figure out how much chloroform to give him, and a man who takes a lot of whiskey to get drunk requires more chloroform to put him under.”
The cowboy grinned. “Ben can outdrink anybody. Takes two bottles of whiskey just to make him feel good. I ain’t never seen him drunk.”
Blair nodded, tried to estimate the weight of the man and began to pour chloroform onto a cone. When he began to go under, he fought the gas, and Blair stretched her body across the top of him while Leander held the man’s lower half. Thankfully, he didn’t have too much strength left and couldn’t do much damage to his wound.
When Lee pulled away the man’s pants and they saw the hole the gunshot had made in his stomach, Blair suspected there wasn’t much chance for him, but Lee didn’t seem to think that way as he cut into the man’s abdomen.
A friend of Uncle Henry’s, a doctor who specialized in abdominal surgery, had once visited them from New York and he had been there when a little girl was brought in who’d fallen on the broken half of a bottle. Blair had been in the surgery when the man’d removed the glass from the child’s stomach and repaired three holes in her intestines. That single operation had so impressed Blair that she’d decided to specialize in abdominal surgery,
But, now, as she watched Leander, threading one needle after another for him, she was awed. The bullet had entered the man at his hipbone and travelled crosswise to leave at the bottom of his buttocks, puncturing his intestines over and over as it made its way through.
Leander’s long fingers followed the bullet’s pathway, sewing layers of intestines as he went. Blair counted fourteen holes that he sewed together before he reached the man’s skin and the exit hole of the bullet.
“He’s to eat absolutely nothing for four days,” Leander was saying as he sewed the man back together. “On the fifth day he can have liquids. If he disobeys me and sneaks food, he’ll be dead within two hours because the food will poison him.” He looked up at the cowboy. “Is that clear?”