Hell on the Prairie (10 page)

He opened the amputation case that he always
carried in his medical bag. “I’ll need to heat these cautery irons
to seal off the blood vessels,” he said, selecting two long metal
instruments with wooden handles.

He opened up the stove and raked the wood
inside to get a blaze going, then inserted the cautery irons.

“
First, I’ll need to apply a
tourniquet to his upper arm to cut off the blood supply, then I
need a short scalpel to cut through the skin down to the muscles. I
always try to use the flap amputation technique. That means the
incision is done obliquely round the arm rather than in a circle,
which will allow me to keep a flap to cover the stump. “

He selected the instruments one by one and
placed them in a row. “Then I’ll need a bistoury knife, that’s this
long one with the curved blade. I’ll use that to separate the
muscles down to the bone. I’ll also need this tenaculum to pinch
the end of arteries and catgut to tie them off and stitch the
muscles’ ends.”

He opened a small jar and drew out a strip
of linen, which he cut upwards from one end with a pair of
scissors, so that it had three tails.

“
I’ll use this to retract the muscles
back from the bones,” he explained. “One strip goes between the
radius and the ulna bones and the others go round them so that I
can pull the muscles back to give me a sight of the bones. Then
I’ll need that medium bone-saw.”

Barclay Patterson tossed the empty whiskey
bottle aside, the contents of which he had forced Rob Parker to
drink. “Right, Dr. Munro. Then I suggest you start operating. He
looks about out of it.”

“
Let me put a wood splint between his
teeth, this will hurt like hell when I start cutting into
skin.”

As he did so he looked pleadingly at
Patterson. “I ask you, man to man, don’t subject Mrs. Parker and
Tommy to this.”

The gambler’s fist tightened on the gun in
his hand and he shook his head. “Start cutting.”

Logan applied the tourniquet to Rob Parker’s
upper arm and screwed it tight until the veins stood out on the
forearm and the skin started to change.

“
I’ll have to move quickly,” he said,
placing the scalpel against the arm. “Whiskey is no substitute for
chloroform.”

He quickly incised the skin in a rapid
oblique circle all the way round the mid-forearm.

He heard the rapid intake of breath from the
bed and imagined Mollie Parker and Tommy Brewster fainting, but he
had no time to look.

Barclay Patterson laughed eerily as Rob
Parker’s eyes shot open and his body bucked against the ropes that
restrained him.

“
Excellent work, doctor. Pray
continue.”

Logan reached for the sharp, long-bladed
bistoury knife. “I warn you, there will be a lot of blood with
this. I have to go deep and I’ll be cutting through his radial and
ulnar arteries. The tourniquet will have stopped most of the
supply, but you can never completely cut it off.’”

“
Go on! Cut! Cut!”

Logan wiped the perspiration from his brow
with the back of his hand. He moved his hand slowly up across his
forehead, then rapidly kept moving upwards, at the same time
spinning round to throw the bistoury with all his might. It flew
like an arrow and pierced Barclay Patterson’s right eye all the way
to the hilt. There was an accompanying sickening squelch and
crackle as it went through orbital contents and orbital cavity into
the brain. Blood and yellow eye jelly spurted out.

The gun went off as the gambler’s body
toppled forward and crashed to the floor where it began convulsing,
the wooden leg beating an horrific, macabre staccato noise on the
floor.

Then he lay motionless. Immediately, Logan
bent and felt his neck, searching for the carotid pulse. He was
dead.

To his great relief, he saw that both Mollie
and Tommy had indeed passed out and had been spared the spectacle
of the man’s grisly death. He released them and lay them gently on
the bed, sure that they would recover and need his aid in moments.
But first he needed to tend Rob Parker, who was lapsing in and out
of consciousness, struggling to overcome the effect of the bottle
of whiskey.

Logan set about stitching the incision on
his arm before releasing the tourniquet, so that he had a
relatively bloodless field on which to work. It was only then that
he started to even consider what would have happened had he missed
the throw with the bistoury knife. It had been a gamble, pure and
simple. Fortunately, it had paid off.

As he stitched, he considered how he was
going to get Marshal Gardner over here. He didn’t envy the task the
lawman would face in sorting out the aftermath of this case.

Like Logan, Gardner had taken an oath; only
his was to uphold the law. In a way Logan was relieved that as a
humble doctor he was only required to care for his patients. In
saving them from Barclay Patterson he had done just that. He felt
no qualms about the way the gambler died. Indeed, it gave him some
professional satisfaction, not unlike the feeling he got whenever
he relieved pain by letting pus out of a festering abscess.

He wondered how many cases of festering
hatred the War had produced.

THE END

IT TAKES A MAN

by

Cheryl Pierson

Derrick McCain let go a low curse as he
finished saddling his dun, then turned toward the roan his mother
would be riding.

He should have gone back a long time
ago, Derrick thought. Right after he found out whose son he
truly
was
–not the man he’d
always thought of as his father…and that was a blessing.

The grim-faced Cherokee messenger, Austenaco
Little Horse, stood stoically in the corner of the barn, watching.
Derrick could feel his old childhood friend’s thrumming impatience
from across the room.

Austen had appeared on their doorstep in the
middle of this November night, apparently expecting them to be
ready to ride with no more than five minutes’ notice.

Derrick’s father –his
real
father –was sick. He pressed
his lips together as he remembered the words Austen had
spoken.

“
Collin Ridge requests you come at
once –with no further delay.” There’d been a slight emphasis on the
word
further
, and Derrick
knew it was aimed at him. Yet, his mother had looked down quickly
when the words had been spoken –as if she felt their sting in her
conscience, as well.

“
We must hurry,” Austen urged, and
Derrick couldn’t help but wonder if things were even more dire than
his longtime friend had led them to believe. Of course, for Austen
to knock on the door in the darkness of night, things had to be
pretty bad from the outset, he reminded himself. He tried to put a
lid on his temper, knowing that a big part of his short fuse was
due to his own anger at himself –and in not having gone back to
Indian Territory sooner, before his father had had to summon him to
his sickbed.

Derrick finished saddling the gentle roan in
silence, not answering Austen’s prodding. It would take a few
minutes to prepare everything they’d need to take –and everything
that had to be left behind, as well, since there was no way of
knowing how long they’d be away.

“
I’m ready,” Fiona McCain said from
the doorway of the barn.

In the dim light of the lanterns, Derrick
saw that his mother carried a small duffel bag of provisions and
another containing what he could only surmise was clothing and
personal items that a woman might need. Her eyes were anxious with
a mixture of worry and anticipation. It had been over seventeen
years since she’d seen Derrick’s father –the man who still held her
heart.

Yet, even though Derrick had tried to
confront her with the knowledge of his parentage, she’d put him
off, not wanting or allowing an honest conversation between them.
Derrick had tried twice –the first time had been several months ago
when he’d come home from chasing Jim Danby’s gang into the San Bois
Mountains –just after he’d learned the truth.

Fiona had pulled him to her and hugged him,
saying simply, “I’m so glad you’re home safe, Derrick.” Then she’d
gone to cook dinner, dodging the questions he put to her.

A few months later, his sister, Kathleen had
been kidnapped by Danby’s surviving cutthroats, who now followed
Clark Davis. Again, he’d broached the subject a few days after his
return, and again, Fiona had side-stepped the questions as
elegantly as a dance master teaching a novice the steps to a
waltz.

Now, only weeks from that aborted
conversation, here they were, preparing to travel several days of
hard riding to get to a man that his mother refused to discuss.

Why?

“
We can stop by Kathleen’s on the way
out of town and let her know to come see to the livestock,” Fiona
said calmly. “Give me a hand up, son. It’s been a while since I
rode Betsy.”

Derrick laced his fingers together and Fiona
stepped into his palms, boosting herself up into the saddle. She
looped the drawstrings of the bags securely around the saddle horn
and rode out of the barn without looking back.

Austen shook his head. “She’s just like I
remembered, Derrick.” A faint grin touched his mouth. “She hasn’t
changed. And neither have you.”

Derrick blew out the lamps, leading his
horse to the door. Austen walked beside Derrick into the
darkness.

“
Yeah, Austen, I’ve changed.” He swung
up into the saddle as Austen did. “Seventeen years –no way a man
can stay the same that long.”

“
Not in the middle of a war,” Austen
agreed.

But there was more than the war,
Derrick thought. And more than the passage of time.
There was finding out you weren’t who you thought
you were.

Derrick remained silent, turning his horse
southward, toward the outskirts of Wolf Creek, toward what had once
been his home…Indian Territory.

***

Five days later, they rode into the small
settlement of Porum, Indian Territory –in the Cherokee Nation, but
inhabited mostly by Anglos. The late afternoon sun colored the
buildings like a painting, and Derrick was struck by the changes
that had taken place in the years since his family had left
there.

Fiona had drawn Betsy up on the rise. Her
gaze swept over the activity below, and even farther beyond, where
the Cherokee village of Briartown lay.

Her breathing hitched, and she squared her
shoulders before starting forward once more. In that gesture,
Derrick realized how uncertain his mother was about the wisdom of
what she was about to do. Yet, there was no choice –not for either
of them.

Austen wisely said nothing, his dark stare
penetrating, meeting Derrick’s own for a moment, then sliding away
from scrutiny.

They rode down from the top of the ridge
into the settlement. Many of the original buildings were still
here, Derrick noticed, as well as several new additions and
expansions. Obviously, the community was thriving, though it looked
to be smaller than Wolf Creek.

No one spared them a second glance. Fiona
rode slowly, and Derrick wondered if she was hoping to see a
familiar face among the people on the streets.

Derrick looked at the faces, too, but for a
different reason. The unexpected appearance of Jim Danby’s gang in
Wolf Creek had taught him a lesson he’d never forget. No matter
where he went, now, he’d always look for faces from his past.
Circumstances had changed in his life, and he wasn’t about to let
the man he’d once been catch up with the man he had become. It had
taken too long to reconcile the two.

Anxiety clawed at his insides. What would
they find in Briartown? Would his true father already have died? He
wanted badly for this reunion to take place, and selfishly, not
because of what it might mean to his mother.

He’d spent a lifetime knowing he was
different somehow, never fitting in with his family. Charley
Blackfeather, the Seminole scout, had commented often on his
“Cherokee face” –so often, in fact, that Charley called him
Cherokee
rather than by his given
name.

When they’d pursued Danby’s gang only a few
months past, Derrick had run into someone who had solved the puzzle
–an old childhood friend from his days in Indian Territory. Carson
Ridge had told him the bittersweet truth –he and Derrick were
half-brothers, both sons of the Cherokee statesman, Collin
Ridge.

Derrick glanced sideways at his
mother. She was still a beautiful woman, despite the hardships
she’d faced. Had she ever been in love with her husband, Andrew
McCain? His sister, Kathleen, had spoken of a letter she’d found in
Fiona’s jewelry casket –a letter that their mother had written to
her husband. In it, she’d spoken of her love for Collin Ridge and
the son that belonged to them –Derrick. She’d written of dreams
that had never come true, and of her wish to go back to Briartown
and re-establish a relationship with Ridge, the man she loved. But,
she’d never done that –even after Andrew McCain’s death.
Why not?

She must have loved Collin beyond anything,
to risk an illicit affair with him. She’d become pregnant with
Derrick. He’d always felt the difference of his parentage, and had
never been close to his brothers or the man he thought of as his
father. What could she have done? She’d been trapped, just as he
had been.

As Derrick watched her, now, he sensed
anticipation, along with the insecurity that anyone in her
situation would feel. Still, Ridge wouldn’t have sent for her had
he not wished to see her, to speak with her.