Raiding With Morgan (17 page)

They were in sight of the Bainbridge home when, without any warning, a rider barged into them from behind. A pistol fired three times as fast as the trigger could be pulled. Owen Mattson slumped over his saddle horn. A stunned and shocked Ty grabbed his father's shoulder and tried to keep him from falling. It was then he saw the three black holes in the back of his shirt.

Instinctively wanting to protect his father, he let loose of him, tugged on Reb's reins, and reached for his Remington. The mysterious pistol barked again before he could turn and fire. The first bullet struck Ty in the back, below the ribs, and jolted him sideways. The next bullet smashed into his left leg. He lost his balance, grabbed desperately for his saddle horn, and missed.

He hit the ground with a solid
thump,
rattling his bones and driving the last ounce of breath from him. Gasping for air, he ignored the sudden, searing-hot pain of his wounds and tried to roll onto his knees. He fell back on his side, too weak to lift a newborn baby.

He forced his eyes open. Nobody was coming to help him and his father. He watched blood seep through the hole in his pants leg, unable to do anything to stop it.

Ty felt things slipping away. What he could make out was edged in black, with the center growing darker.

His dying regret was that he'd never had a chance to hug his father.

H
e was afloat in swirling pools of light and dark, first one and then the other. His senses told him nothing. He didn't know up from down, left from right. The pain came and went. If he so much as twitched, the wounds in his back and thigh turned into raging infernos that sickened him.

Once in the midst of suffering through the pain, he thought he heard a voice whisper, “Never fear, I'm with you.”

Was it an angel or a tempting she-devil? Was he in Heaven or in Hell? It surprised him that he didn't really care where he was.

He had no father. He had no mother. The grandmother who raised him had gone to meet her Maker. He had deserted his grandfather without the courtesy of a simple “good-bye.” He had no ties anywhere. There was nothing ahead of him but the grave or, perhaps worse, a Yankee prison camp.

On top of that, his eyes were too dry to shed tears for the longest while. He had no means of expressing his grief except for a heavy heart, which ached without relief. He wasn't certain which pain hurt the most, the real or the imagined.

He came awake at last, swimming mightily through a curtain of cottony haze. His eyes popped open and he was staring at a whitewashed ceiling, with spidery hairline cracks. Light streamed into the room from two closely spaced windows.

Expecting that terrible pain to flare in his back, he turned his head toward the twin windows, one inch at a time. Surprisingly, he found the pain caused by the deliberate movement of his head was tolerable. He knew that moving the rest of him would invite disaster.

The door at the foot of the bed opened. He saw towels draped over a bare arm, the bodice of a red-checked gingham dress, a silver locket on a thin chain at the base of a tan throat. Then, as he lifted his eyes, he saw a familiar, blue-eyed face surrounded by raven-black hair.

For a fleeting instant, he thought for certain he'd died and was in Heaven. But that couldn't be. Dana Bainbridge had not perished with him. So he was actually alive, in a room, in her father's home? How that had come to be, he couldn't fathom. A tear he didn't dare wipe slid down his cheek and he snapped his eyes shut to hide his embarrassment.

A gentle fingertip traced the track of the tear. “You've been through a lot, Corporal Ty Mattson, but you're alive, and our doctor believes you will survive.”

Embarrassed that he had shut his eyes, Ty opened them and was greeted by a female smile full of warmth. He muttered, “How badly am I hurt?”

Dana Bainbridge said, “One bullet passed through your left side, below the ribs from back to front, and the other went through your left thigh. Apparently, neither touched a vital organ or an artery. Dr. Gates claimed he'd never seen two bullets rip through a soldier in those areas and do so little damage. According to him, the friend of yours who put the tourniquet on your leg so quickly and doused the exit and entry wounds with whiskey improved your chances of survival considerably.”

A suddenly excited Ty tried to sit up, demanding weakly, “What friend?”

Pain washed over him with a vengeance. Everything in the room went red. Dana Bainbridge pushed gently on his chest and he sank down into the folds of the feather mattress, stifling a sob. When she spoke, her tone was firm and straightforward. “You're not to move. You're to stay calm. If you try that again, I'll leave the room. You hear me, Corporal?”

Ty bit his lip, waited for the pain to subside, and gave her the tiniest nod in the history of the human race. He gathered what little strength he had left and asked in a mere whisper, “Who brought me here?”

Dana Bainbridge dabbed Ty's sweaty brow with a towel. “The same person who bandaged your wounds, Lieutenant Shawn Shannon. He kicked the front door open, brushed Father aside, carried you up the rear steps, and placed you in my dead brother's bed. Father chased after him, swelled like a croaking toad, preparing to launch another tirade about his home being unlawfully invaded, then the lieutenant pulled a pistol, which, I swear, was the size of a bed pillow. My father is not a coward, but he peered down that huge barrel and retreated like a scampering rabbit. I saw that happen from the hallway. I came into the room to check on you, and the next thing I knew, General Morgan was beside me. He removed his hat, touched my shoulder, and said, ‘He's a special lad, the son of the finest soldier who ever served under me. Please look after him, as you would one of your own.' ”

Those five words “who ever served under me” shattered Ty's heart. The whole terrifying scene was right there in front of him once again: the assault from behind, the rapidly firing pistol, the bullet holes in his father's cotton shirt, the limp slump of his father's body as he spun to defend the both of them from their attacker. Knowing his father was dead was a hammer blow that numbed his entire being. He moaned and the tears finally flowed, unchecked.

Dana Bainbridge let Ty have a good, long cry. She had needed one often in the past year, what with losing two brothers and her mother. The last loss had been the greatest. It was as if fate had forever turned against her family for no good reason.

Ty cared little if his weeping made him appear a child to a grown woman. His eyes eventually ran dry, but he was afraid to move his arm to wipe his cheeks. Dana Bainbridge did it for him with a fresh towel.

He felt a terrible tiredness and realized he was falling asleep. Before he blacked out, he hoped beyond hope that Dana Bainbridge had the answer to the most vital of questions. He beckoned with a finger and pursed his lips. She lowered her ear to his mouth.

“What happened to my father's body?”

“He's buried in our family plot, on the high ground by the river, with my mother.”

Ty took great comfort in that. He had learned from mess fire conversations since joining the raiders that gray-clad soldiers were often buried quickly by the Yankees in any nearby open spot of ground, for the sake of expediency and convenience. There was little time in the aftermath of a battle to fret over identifying the fallen enemy and notifying their families.

How his father had come to be buried in the Bainbridge plot raised further questions. Why had Magistrate Bainbridge, a passionate Rebel hater, allowed such a thing? Had General Morgan and Shawn Shannon somehow been involved?

And where were the general and Shawn? Had they been killed or captured or escaped across the Ohio?

Try as he might, he couldn't fight off sleep another second. He dozed off, praying for a rest free of nightmares.

He awakened in a midnight-black room. He sensed someone moving at the foot of the bed. A sharp, oily scraping of metal against metal—the unmistakable sound of a pistol cocking—furrowed his brow. Feigning deep sleep, he labored to keep his breathing slow and measured. There was nothing else to do. Bedridden and unable to defend himself, he was at the total mercy of the gun holder. He caught a sharp intake of breath, not his own, and steeled his body against a bullet.

No shot rang out. Had his would-be murderer lost his nerve, or was he savoring the helplessness of his intended victim? The absolute quiet and the waiting were pure agony. His father had died without the opportunity to see and confront his slayer. Was that how his life would also end?

Despite the pain, he clenched his fists and was on the verge of shouting, “Shoot, damn you,” when a second oily scraping clamped his mouth shut.

The hammer on the pistol was being lowered. Clothing rustled. Flat-soled brogan shoes squeaked. The door latch rattled. Then he was alone again, quivering from crown to heel.

Totally spent, he passed out.

 

A sharp patting of his cheek rescued Ty from the cozy darkness craved by the wounded. Morning daylight backlit a head with bristling white hair, lumpy ears big as Ty's palms, large-beaked nose befitting an eagle, pellet-hard hazel eyes, thin pink lips, and a protruding chin shaped like the carved beakhead of a warship. Whoever he was, he was the most unattractive individual, male or female, Ty had ever seen.

The head loomed over Ty and said, “I'm Dr. Horatio Gates. How is our young raider this morning? Hurting less, are we?”

Ty recoiled from the smell of the doctor's rum-laced breath. As Boone Jordan was wont to observe, “Regardless of their station in life, some gents can't start the day without fortifying themselves with distilled spirits.” Dr. Horatio Gates was definitely one of those gents.

“Yes, sir, I believe the pain is less than it was yesterday.”

“Well, by damned, I've finally met a polite Rebel. They do exist,” Dr. Gates said with a chuckle.

He slid the covering blanket from Ty's bed. “This won't be pleasant, but I must examine your wounds, front and back, and change your bandages. It's been two days since I was here.”

To Ty's amazement, he was wearing a clean shirt and nothing below the waist except a pair of short drawers, neither of which belonged to him. And his body reeked of cologne. He had been too preoccupied with his pain to realize someone had undressed and washed him. “Did you remove my clothes, Doctor?”

“Yes, there wasn't much left, though, after Dana finished with her scissors. That child can be right helpful. She insisted I bathe you. It was a new experience for an old sawbones like me. I usually leave the washing to nurses and others. Miss Lydia toted hot water up from the kitchen for half the morning.”

“And I never knew you were here?”

“Son, if you lose a lot of blood, it takes a while to recoup. I've had patients who went days without coming to. You were unconscious just four days, by my reckoning. Now let's have a look at you.”

Dr. Gates first retrieved a roll of cotton cloth, a white towel, and a quart bottle of rum from a black leather satchel resting on the floor. The physician wet the towel with the rum and laid it beside the bandage on the bed within easy reach. He unbuttoned Ty's shirt; and with a gasping Ty arching his back as ordered, the doctor removed the bloody bandage encircling Ty's middle. After studying the bullet hole below Ty's ribs, Dr. Gates said, “Excellent, no mortification of the flesh is evident and healing is under way. We need to sit you up, lad. I'll be as gentle with you as I can.”

Ty moaned when Dr. Gates helped him into a sitting position, but he didn't pass out. “Same back here,” the physician said. He swabbed Ty's entry and exit wounds with the rum-dampened towel, wrapped the fresh bandage about him, and tied it off.

Dr. Gates eased Ty flat on the bed and followed the same procedure in treating his leg wound. The aging physician settled on a nearby chair and downed two hefty swallows of rum. “Corporal, the bullet that tore through your thigh may have nicked your leg bone, without breaking it. I can't be sure either way. There may be enough bone and nerve damage to leave you with a slight limp. Otherwise, I expect a full recovery.”

After a final slurp of rum before stashing the bottle in his satchel, Dr. Gates said, “Lad, I wasn't always a besotted sawbones residing in Pomeroy, Ohio. I practiced medicine at the finest military hospital in Washington City for decades. How I sank to where I am now is not important. What's important to you is what Dr. Frank Culver and I discovered in treating numerous bullet wounds. If those wounds are regularly cleansed with alcohol, and fresh bandages are applied, and the patient has sufficient bed rest and proper nourishment, his chances of making a full recovery are much greater. We can't explain it in medical terms, but we're convinced that will eventually happen. I will leave instructions and a supply of bandages with Dana. Old Bainbridge has an ample supply of alcohol. Dana can tend to you as well as I can. If your wounds change in appearance or begin to bleed, she can send for me.”

“Then I won't see you again?” an anxious Ty asked. His opinion of Dr. Horatio Gates had undergone a major transformation in thirty short minutes.

Closing his satchel, Dr. Gates winked at Ty and said, “Corporal, it's best I'm not seen coming and going. No one except the members of this household knows you're here. The Yankees were in hot pursuit of Morgan and his men, and they had no cause to bother the Bainbridge family. Lucky for us, they established a field hospital for the wounded in Portland rather than here.

“At General Morgan's request and Dana's insistence, Magistrate Bainbridge agreed that he would harbor you for two to three weeks before turning you over to Federal authorities. That is a very generous offer, since those same authorities may frown on his hiding the enemy and seize his property.”

Ty couldn't help wondering what hold Dana had on her father. He couldn't imagine the magistrate risking his wealth and stature, no matter how much he had appeared to respect John Hunt Morgan. Ty was thankful beyond measure he wasn't in that temporary Portland hospital, where the medical care from blue-belly army doctors would be much less trustworthy than what Dr. Gates was providing him.

Rising from his chair, the eagle-nosed physician cracked a smile. “I'll take my leave. I wish you the best with whatever befalls you. You can trust the Bainbridge family. They will maintain our ruse and you'll be safe here until you're out of bed and on your feet. Good day, Corporal Mattson.”