Doc walked back to where Ol' Rooster stood in the shade, having drunk his fill. "Might as well ride over to Arnie Smith's hadn't we?" He took the reins in his hand and swung into the saddle. "Save us a trip, since we're so close. We'll cut through the woods, here." He guided Ol' Rooster along a path through the trees, dodging and ducking limbs, cursing as a blackberry bush snagged his trousers with thorns.
He had stopped to loosen the brambles when two gunshots sounded from the direction of Arnie Smith's house. Not rifle or shotgun, he thought. Pistol. He kicked the horse into action once more, clearing the edge of the woods a few seconds later. Smith's cabin was situation across the meadow, near the other side of the forest's edge.
Doc scanned the area for any sign of guests, but the cabin looked quiet and still. Too still. He approached with caution, noting a tell-tale cloud of dust dissipating in the distance along the road. If he'd taken the road, he might've seen who it was.
He stepped down from the saddle and looped the reins around the porch railing. The skin at the nape of his neck prickled. He stepped up onto the porch.
"Arnie?" He knocked on the door. Arnie had to be here. He couldn't walk. Couldn't travel. "Arnie?"
No answer.
He pushed the door open, wishing for the first time in a long while that he'd worn a gun. First, do no harm. But don't be stupid.
Arnie was lying face down on the floor beside the settee. Doc hurried in, kneeling beside him. The familiar coppery odor of blood was in the air, and as he turned him over, a crimson stain blossomed across his shoulder and another at his side.
Arnie opened his eyes. "Doc? How'd you get here?"
"Don't talk." Doc looked around the cabin for something he could use to stop the bleeding, finally going into a bedroom and ripping the sheet from the bed. He tore a long strip from it.
"Doc—"
"Quiet."
"It was Tom Carver."
Doc sat on his haunches, pulling Smith's shirt away from his skin. He stopped, looking into his eyes to be sure he was lucid. "That must've been his dust on the road."
Smith grunted as Doc pressed on the wound at his side to stem the blood flow.
"He'll be back," Doc muttered aloud. "He'll want to be sure he finished you off. They always come back."
Smith's chin trembled. "My boy…"
"Don't worry, now," Doc soothed, tying off the temporary bandage at Smith's shoulder. "When he gets here, I'll send him after my medical bag."
"No! What if—" he broke off, grimacing.
"All right, Arnie. You want him to stay here? With us?"
"Not if…Tom comes…"
"Let's don't worry about that right now. Just try not to talk, and let me get this bleeding stopped."
Smith whimpered like a wounded puppy as Doc helped him sit up.
He quickly wrapped a bandage around his side, tying it off, and then slipped another piece of the folded sheet under the strip where the bullet hole was.
"Will I live?"
Doc suppressed a smile as he nodded and stood up. The wounds were bad, but Arnie had enough padding to protect his vital organs. "We've gotta get that bullet out of your side, but it looks like the other one passed through cleanly." He glanced around the cabin. "Arnie, where's your pistol?"
He nodded toward the bedroom. "Back there. Got a peg for the belt back there. I usually leave the gun in the holster."
"I'll go get it. Just in case Carver does come back here before we can get you moved and—"
The click of a gun behind him stopped him in mid-sentence. He slowly turned to see Tom Carver's smiling face framed in the open window, a cigar clamped between his teeth.
"Too late, old man. I'm already here."
Chapter 21
Allie screwed the last lid on tight. Nine mason jars of water. She had no more empty ones. Two of the younger boys had stayed behind to 'help' her when the others had gone to begin the fence-building. Mark held the first tow sack open as she placed five jars in it. He reached for another, opening it as she set two jars inside. She put them close together and looped the tow sack to hold them in place, then handed it to him.
"Careful, now. They'll break if they clink together too much."
He nodded solemnly. "Now Lenny's, Miss Allie."
She smiled at the way he watched over the other boy, Lenny, who was about the same age, but had never said a word since they'd arrived. Lenny opened his sack, and Allie put the last two jars inside, tying it off. "Let's go," she said. "They'll be glad to get a cold drink of water, I imagine, don't you?"
"Yep," Mark said, carefully hoisting his sack over his shoulder. Lenny did the same, and Allie lifted the heaviest one gently to hold it slung across her shoulder.
The day was already a scorcher, and it was early yet – barely noon. Allie had wracked her brain to come up with an idea for a filling lunch. She had been woefully short on supplies – even before she'd acquired eighteen orphans and two men.
As much as she hated to admit it, one of the cows would have to be butchered when they arrived. It was the only way to have meat without going into Spring Branch or Hobart.
For today, she had biscuits in the oven, and she planned to make scrambled eggs to fill them with. Mark had suggested it – a kind of egg sandwich. She glanced down at him as they walked past the barn. He smiled up at her.
"Thank you for letting us come live here, Miss Allie."