By Layne and Jo

(Layne writing Hannah, Jo writing Ben)

Chapter Three:

Ben thought it was only three miles to the homestead. Today, though, the distance had lengthened and with the sun at its zenith, he was uncomfortably hot. The wrappings the woman had tightened around his middle constricted his breathing and, in addition, each jounce of the horse's gait plowed right up his side. He figured the damn bullet must've splintered some bone. The woman had used the phrase 'operate on you' and that kept ringing in his mind. A woman? Women delivered babies all right, bandaged up scrapes 'n such, but she'd said 'operate'. Just what did she mean by that? Well, he had to be back in the saddle by evening, whatever, however. And he would be.

Forced to sit behind Charlie and hold onto him, Hannah thought that ride must have been three hundred miles, instead of only three.  She didn't know what would happen once she had finished removing the bullet in the other man's side.  His wound was not deadly, but out here the chance of infection was so much greater than in a hospital or a doctor's office where conditions were more sterile.

If anything serious happened to him, the man called Charlie would kill her.  She'd seen it in his eyes.  Even if she successfully removed the bullet and his boss recovered, Charlie just might kill her anyway. To remove that bullet, she'd need to administer ether or, at the very least, laudanum to numb the pain.  While laudanum wouldn't make him lose consciousness as the ether would, either way he would be in no condition to exercise any control over his men.  If one of them decided to kill her then, she'd be at his mercy.

When she wasn't worrying about her own fate during the ride, she was watching the back of the man on the black horse in front of them.  Hannah could tell by the way he sat and his occasional movements that he was in a great deal of pain.  And she had caused it.  Herself.  A doctor.  A healer of men had injured a man and could have killed him.  No matter what happened to her, she was thankful that she had not taken a life.  

Just before they got to the old ruin of the homestead, Ben paused and placed his hand over his eyes.  He didn't feel well at all but, damn, if he was going to let it show more'n he had to.  Knowing he had to get moving or Charlie would come up beside him, asking him questions

about how he was doing,  he urged his horse onward. 

Five minutes more brought them to the house, or what was left of it.  It still had four walls but about a third of the roof had collapsed into one end of the place.  Ben had holed up there once before several years back and knew well no creature comforts would be found inside. Last
he'd been there he'd found a bedstead with its ticking long gone.  He thought about that bed, thought how all he wanted to do right now was lie a spell and let the world tend to itself.  That wasn't possible, though. 

He would've turned to look back at Charlie and the woman, but that would twist his side, so he didn't.  It was time to dismount and he let his weight shift over on his left leg as usual then gasped, clutching the pommel tightly.  How was he going to get off the damn horse?

The moment she saw the place where they were obviously headed, Hannah's hopes sank.  This wasn't even what she'd call indoors!  She was supposed to operate on a man here?  When she'd decided to come west, where there were fewer doctors and she'd felt her skills were more needed, she'd known there wouldn't be all the comfortable facilities of New York.  Still, she'd never expected to treat her first patient beside a wrecked stagecoach, or perform her first operation virtually outdoors!

She said nothing, though, both because of her fear and because her training as a doctor had told her that she should say nothing to discourage a patient. 

Then, she heard a gasp from the man attempting to dismount the black horse.  As though she were the only other person present, Hannah immediately slid off the horse's back and ran over.  Reaching up, she placed a hand on his hip.  "Here.  Let me help you down."

Ben looked down at the woman. "What's your name?" he asked, suddenly realizing he didn't know and also that he wanted to know.  She didn't look big enough or strong enough to help him down and he'd been surprised by her offer, by her quick response.  Blinking back the pain, he simply stared then into her eyes but made no move yet to dismount.

Charlie, though, was right behind her and gave her a push away from the black, sending her stumbling to the side. "You ain't got the stuff for gettin' a man off a horse!" he snapped, his lip curling in disgust.  "'Sides, if it wasn't for you, he'd be able to get down hisself. You did this and I ain't forgettin' it."  Then turning his back on her, he helped Ben down, his face changing from scorn to something very akin to tenderness.  "Take it easy there, Boss. I got you." 

Hannah managed to right herself from stumbling before she actually fell down.  Regaining her balance, she saw the look on Charlie's face as he helped his boss down from the horse.  So there was at least one person in the world he cared about.  It was as though he found only this one

man worthy of his time and attention.

She shifted her eyes back to the man who'd just dismounted the horse.  "McLaren," she told him.  "My name's Hannah McLaren."

Ben, leaning heavily on Charlie, entered the house through the doorless doorway.  A scorpion skittered away through the deep layer of dust on the plank floor. The house was a one-story rectangle and not very big.  It was all one room with the bedstead and a single chair at its left-hand end,  a big trunk, its lid sprung open, contents gone, along the back wall,  and what passed for a kitchen at the other end.  There was a stone fireplace there, a table with two more chairs.  The missing ceiling that had collapsed had mostly been hauled out by men who used the house as a stop-over, though a pile of it still occupied a corner near the fireplace.  Beams of light came in through the remaining rafters, the dust their entrance stirred floating up in bright speckles through it.

The bed still had its roping but there was nothing on it besides that. That end of the house was

in deep shadow and Ben knew enough that that wouldn't work for the delicate task of removing a bullet.  His eyes moved to the big trestle table and he sighed. It was pine and hard and all he wanted was to sink deep into a featherbed.  "There," he said, nodding toward the table with the mid-day light shining down on it.  He turned his head, looking to Hannah for confirmation.

She'd entered the house--if it could be called such--behind Charlie and the other man.  It took only an instant to tell that it didn't look any better from the inside than it did from the outside.  The end of it that remained wholly standing was too dark to see what she needed to do.  The other end-  there was light and there was a table, but the dust stirring there wasn't much better than outside.

The man she'd shot was nodding toward the table and looking at her.  Slowly, she nodded back.  "It'll have to do," she told him.  "But there are a few things we'll need to do first."

"First thing," Ben said, "is for lookouts to be posted again.  Second is for Charlie to fetch me that bottle of whiskey he's got in his saddlebag."  He was used to being in command and he was in command even though he could barely stand.  He was going to stay that way come hell or high water.  Sitting heavily on a dusty wooden chair near the table, he looked up at Hannah, waiting to see what she'd say next.

"Someone needs to build a fire in that fireplace for me," Hannah said briskly, looking around

at what the little place contained.  "I'll need to boil some water.  And I need that larger bag I brought."

She didn't reveal how much she was dreading this.  Something could go wrong, even under ideal conditions, and this was about as far from ideal as she could possibly imagine.  Still, she kept her wits about her.  She was going to need them.  Hannah had never had a drink of whiskey in her life, but right now she would have liked to have had just a sip from that bottle he'd just mentioned!

Going over to the man on the chair, she stooped down and moved his shirt aside to check his bandages.  He'd done some bleeding on the way here, but not much.  Nodding to herself in satisfaction over her bandaging job, she looked up to catch his eyes on her.

To cover her feelings of awkwardness and confusion, she asked, "Do I get to know your name

as well?  Seems I ought to at least know the name of the man I shot."

Charlie handed him the whiskey bottle, already opened, and Ben lifted it to his lips and, not taking his eyes off hers, proceeded to swallow several huge draughts.  Then, resting the bottom of the bottle on his right thigh,  said, "Wade, Benjamin Wade."  The tip of his tongue came out, licking along his lower lip, wet from the whiskey, and he added, "Hannah McLaren," indicating he'd heard when she'd given her name earlier even though he'd been walking toward the door with Charlie.  He also simply liked to say a woman's name aloud when he first discovered it.  Somehow the way he did it, he possessed the name almost as though he had some carved box and had just opened the lid and dropped the name inside.  Then he'd close the lid, ever after giving him singular rights to the use of its contents.

The eyes that held her own as he swallowed from the bottle had a warmth in them, an intimacy, as though there were no one here but the two of them.  In spite of the situation they were in, the way he licked the whiskey from his lip was almost sensual--as was the way he said her name.  The way he spoke it made her feel as though she'd been branded--like a calf that would wear the sign of one rancher for the rest of its life.

After a moment, she cleared her throat softly, trying to regain her professional attitude.  "All right, Mr. Wade-"  She looked at the activity going on around them.  The man who'd helped her onto Charlie's horse earlier was starting a fire in the fireplace.  The one named James, who'd carried her larger bag had dropped it to the floor near her. 

Rising, Hannah briskly rolled up the sleeves of her blouse, which had been crisp and white when she'd put it on.  That seemed like a hundred years ago now and it was dingy and had blood stains from both the now-dead guard and from this man called Benjamin Wade.  She found an old pot near the fireplace which looked as though it would still hold water.  Thrusting it out toward Charlie, she ordered, "Fill this with water and get it over that fire."

Opening the bag, she pulled out a clean rag and proceeded to start wiping the thick dust off the table.  Not looking at Benjamin Wade, she addressed him nevertheless.  "I'm going to scrub this table with soap and hot water.  I have some white sheets in this bag.  I'll spread one over the table and have a couple of your men rig up a tent over the table with another one.  That should help keep some of this dust out of the area I'm working in."  Her voice was brisk and she was afraid to look at him.  Those eyes affected her in some strange way.

"Once I get my instruments sterilized in boiling water, I'll be ready to start.  It would be best if I give you ether to make you sleep, or some laudanum to keep the pain to a minimum-"  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him shaking his head.

"Whiskey'll do me fine."  He took a couple more long swigs of the liquid, trying to hold himself upright in the chair as the weight of pain pulled hard and his back wanted to curve, his shoulders sag. 

Hannah's jaw almost dropped at his words and then she stated firmly, "No, whiskey will not do you fine.  I'm talking about removing a bullet and whatever else I find that might need to be done.  There's going to be a lot of pain involved, Mr. Wade, and I'm going to need you to be absolutely still, do you understand?  Ether will put you out for a little while, but not long.  Long enough for me do what needs doing.  At the very least, I need to give you some laudanum for the pain!"

Her voice had risen steadily during the short speech she had just given him.  She was already operating under much less than ideal conditions.  For him to move while she was operating could do a lot more damage than she had already done.  She fixed his eyes with her own, her tone demanding.  "I'm the doctor here, Mr. Wade.  You need to listen to me."

"My side," he replied, keeping his gaze level. "My pain. Whiskey'll do me fine," he repeated, the set of his jaw clearly showing that was his final word on it.  He lifted the bottle, drinking some more. When he finally lowered it, he asked, "I need to keep any of this for you to pour on me?"  In his experience, that was the typical antiseptic.

She might be the doctor, but it was apparent that he was intent on remaining the boss.  For a brief moment, Hannah clinched her fists in frustration and apprehension.  She hoped she kept the apprehension off her face. 

Meeting his gaze steadily, she said, "All right." The sheet tent had been hung over the table and her instruments were ready.

"I'm going to need your men to clear out of here," she said firmly.  "I don't need anyone else stirring up more dust in here."  She had taken a large full-length apron out of her bag and was in the process of putting up her hair, so that she could cover it with a kerchief.  "And you'll need to get undressed before you get on the table."

"How undressed?"  He tried for a somewhat lewd expression but couldn't manage it through

the pain, which had been increasing relentlessly since his ride.

"Undressed," she repeated, "as in everything.  I've put another sheet on the table for you to drape over yourself."

Hannah had covered her hair and was tying on the apron in quick, business-like movements.  Her concentration was completely on the task at hand.  "And no, I won't need any of your whiskey.  I have alcohol."  Thank goodness she'd wrapped the glass bottle well for travel.  It hadn't broken during the wild ride in the stagecoach.

"He ain't gonna show you everythin', doctor or no doctor," Charlie said firmly, his chin jutting out rather far. "And I ain't leavin' neither. Don't you think I ain't gonna be watchin' every single move you make, woman."

"Always planned to die with my boots on," Ben sighed, "and not in no bed, not even when the bed's a damn table."  He looked at Charlie and half-grinned.  "You let her see down to my hips, you think, Charlie?  I can keep my boots on that way."  A certain wry amusement flickered in his eyes.  He didn't wait for Hannah's approval or disapproval.  "Here, Charlie, you help me

get this coat off." 

Ignoring Hannah, Charlie moved close and utterly gently began to slide Ben's coat, first off his right arm.  Ben bit his lip at the upgrade in pain the motions caused him.  The vest and shirt followed, then the braces, leaving his white long johns that had been cut along his left side. They only had a few buttons at the neck and Charlie stopped while Ben panted a bit, giving him a moment to recover himself.

"I ain't gonna be able to manage gettin' this off,"  Ben whispered, barely able to speak.  "Just cut the rest of it all the way 'round and be done with it."  His gun belt had been removed back

at the stage and now, his fingers shaking somewhat, he unbuckled his other belt, pushing his pants down a few inches.  He watched Charlie pull out a long knife and vaguely wondered if the doc had scissors.

As though she'd read the man's mind, Hannah pulled a pair of scissors out of her bag and held them out to Charlie, handles first.  "Use these," she said quietly.  "It'll be easier."

Once again, she had noticed Charlie's regard for Mr. Wade--how he took care of him, almost as if... 

Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, Hannah continued, "And you're not going to die, Mr. Wade.  Not if I can help it."

Taking a cloth mask from her bag, she held it out to Charlie.  "If you're going to be here, you're going to wear this," she told him.

Meeting Benjamin Wade's eyes, Hannah spoke quietly.  "When you're on the table and ready, we'll get started."

ON TO PART 4

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