“Do you think there is one in Bodie?”
“Yes,” he said, “and next to the undertakers, they’re likely to be the most prosperous men in town.”
Longarm slipped his hand under Megan and said, “I’m going to roll you over easy so that your weight is on this bandage, and then I’m going downstairs to get us some help.”
Megan’s eyes dilated and her fingernails bit into his forearm. “Please,” she whispered, “don’t leave me. I could bleed to death all alone.”
“All right,” he said, deciding to carry her downstairs. “Just loop your arm around my neck and we’ll go find a doctor right now.”
Megan nodded. She was extremely pale, and Longarm was scared that she might actually bleed to death before he could get her real medical help. And what if there actually was no legitimate doctor in Bodie? Well, then, Longarm thought, I’ll find a needle and thread and sew her up myself.
She grunted with pain when he lifted and carried her out of their hotel room. Longarm descended the stairs carefully, and when he reached the lobby, he shouted at the desk clerk and everyone else in the place.
“This woman has been shot! We need a doctor!”
The desk clerk stared at Megan. “Oh, dear heavens! Was she shot in your room?”
“Yes, dammit! Someone tried to ambush me through the window and got my wife instead. Now, get a damn doctor over here!”
The clerk bolted out from behind his desk yelling, “Yes, sir, Mr. Jefferson! Yes, sir!”
Longarm looked down at Megan. Her skin was bathed in a cold sweat and her breathing was shallow and rapid.
“You can lay her over here on this sofa,” a hotel guest said. “We got two doctors and neither one of them is worth spit, but I’ll go help find ‘em.”
“Much obliged,” Longarm said, laying Megan down on the sofa. He looked up and shouted, “Someone find us blankets!”
There were three other men in the lobby, and they dashed upstairs to get their own blankets.
“Just hang on,” Longarm told Megan, slipping his hand under her shoulder to discover that the bandaging he’d used was saturated with her blood. “Just hang on.”
The hotel clerk was the first one back with a doctor in tow. He was a short, heavyset man in his sixties, round and out of breath.
“Goddammit,” he stammered, “who the hell is so important that you interrupt …”
But when he saw Megan and then felt Longarm’s icy gaze, his words died in his throat. “What happened to her?”
“Shot through a window by a high-powered rifle. A Hawken or Sharps, from the sound of the report,” Longarm said tightly. “The slug tore away a big hunk of flesh and might even have scored a rib.”
Has she lost much blood?”
“Of course she has!” Longarm shouted. “Can’t you tell just by looking at her?”
The doctor rocked back, face turning crimson. “Don’t you dare shout at me! I only had a year of dentistry training in Boston! I’m-“
“Get out of here!” Longarm grated. “Anyone who would ask as stupid a question as that after seeing this girl has no right to practice medicine.”
The man jumped back. “She’ll bleed to death if I don’t help her! Twenty dollars, cash up front.”
Longarm was so outraged and infuriated that, had it not been for Megan needing him at her side, he would have jumped up and throttled the little sonofabitch with his bare hands. “Get out of here!”
The man spun on his heels and headed for the door, almost colliding with Bodie’s other doctor. This man was older and far more dignified-looking. However, he had the red, heavily veined nose of a bad drinker and when he drew closer, Longarm could see that his eyes were bloodshot and unclear.
“Are you drunk!” Longarm demanded.
“Not yet.” The man straightened and lifted his chin. He was thin and his clothes were threadbare, his cuffs frayed and soiled. He held a medical bag in his bony hand, and was gripping it so tightly that his knuckles were white.
“This girl’s shoulder was laid open by a big-caliber hunting rifle,” Longarm said. “She’s still hemorrhaging although I’ve done everything I can to stanch the flow. Can you help her?”
“Sir?”
“You had better be sober and good enough to help her,” Longarm warned. “Because if you’re not and you touch her, I’ll make sure that you never touch another patient.”
The tall man gulped. “Is that a … a threat?” he whispered.
“No, a promise.”
For a moment, Longarm was sure that the man was going to turn and run to his next drink. But then, he seemed to gather himself and stand even taller to pronounce, “I was, sir, a captain in the Union army, and I’ve treated hundreds … no, thousands of gunshot and saber wounds. So stand aside!”
Longarm had never been happier to stand aside. He could smell whiskey on the doctor’s breath and the man’s hands were shaking slightly, but otherwise, he seemed in full control of his faculties.
“How much blood has this young lady lost?”
“Too much,” Longarm said, watching as the doctor lifted one of Megan’s eyelids, then the other to measure the size of her pupils. He then took her pulse.
“Shallow and racing,” he pronounced. “We’ve got to get the hemorrhaging under control very quickly.”
“I know that.”
The doctor ordered Longarm to roll Megan over so that he could examine her injury. When Longarm did, he saw the doctor’s eyes widen with obvious alarm.
“This is a nasty wound,” the doctor said, tearing open his medical bag and pulling out a kit of suturing needles, thread, and bandages. “She’s already in shock and I may not be able to save her, but I’ll try.”
“That’s all that I expect.”
The doctor tried to thread his needle, but his hands were shaking too badly, so Longarm did it for him while the man fumbled into his pocket and extracted a pint of whiskey.
“To steady the nerves,” he said when Longarm started to grab the bottle away from him.
“All right, but just for the nerves,” Longarm warned.
“Of course.” The man took a long pull on the bottle, then corked it and said, “By the way, my name is Thaddeus Blake. Dr. Thaddeus Blake.”
“And you’ve had training?”
“Yes,” the man said slipping the bottle into his pocket and bending over Megan so that he could begin his work.
“First,” Blake said, dousing his hands with a little of the whiskey and then gently easing his forefinger into the wound. “I must be sure that there are no fragments of lead in her body.”
“Shouldn’t you use forceps?”
“Probably,” Blake said, “but I prefer my own methods.”
Longarm held his breath, and Thaddeus Blake actually closed his suffering eyes so that he could concentrate better on his fingertip.
“Ah,” he grunted softly, “the slug is still inside of her.”
“Can you …”
“There,” Thaddeus whispered, “I’ve got it!”
And sure enough, the doctor did extract the misshapen hunk of lead, saying, “It’s obscene, isn’t it, what a small piece of lead can do the human tissue.”
“It’s not that small,” Longarm told him.
“Give me the needle and suture,” Blake ordered, his face now bathed in the sweat of his own fevered anxiety. “I am quite sure that this lovely young girl cannot stand this blood loss for more than a few more minutes.”
Megan flinched the first time the curved needle entered her torn flesh, but then she mercifully fainted. Longarm kept sponging away blood so that the doctor could see where he was stitching.
“You’ve also done this a time or two before, haven’t you,” Blake muttered as his brow was creased with intense concentration.
“That’s right.” Longarm studied the man. Thaddeus Blake might have been sixty, but Longarm was willing to bet that he was, in actuality, at least ten years younger. Sweat was beading on his forehead and he looked very unwell.
“Do you need more whiskey to steady yourself, Doctor?”