Текст книги "Mankillers"

Автор книги: Ken Casper

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Inside the narrow glass-encased compartment, aware of the woman across from him, Buck ruminated as he crouched beside his patient. He’d sworn he’d never perform another amputation, and now he was about to cut off the lower half of his friend’s leg.

#

It amazed Sarah that the preparation took longer than the operation. Buck instructed her in meticulous detail on her duties as his anesthetist. After administering a generous dose of laudanum to make Rex sleepy, she’d placed a napkin over the tea strainer and held it an inch above his nose and mouth. At Buck’s direction she dripped chloroform slowly onto the cloth and watched Rex’s eyes. If his pupils started to dilate she was to slow the rate.

“Reverend,” Buck said, “I’m going to need you to hold his leg steady while I cut.”

“But you’re using chloroform.” Clearly the minister wasn’t eager to be part of the surgical team.

“He won’t feel anything, but his body doesn’t know that,” Buck explained. “He’ll jerk as if he did.”

Christian held Rex’s injured leg in a firm grip between the knee and the tourniquet below it. Sarah could see only some of what was going on. She was astounded how fast the amputation went. What disturbed her most was the sound of the bone saw and the sight of Buck lowering the severed foot to the floor. Within minutes he had sutured the skin flaps and dressed the wound.

“You can both ease up now,” he said, as he mopped his brow. “It’s all over.”

#

Buck finished washing his hands of Rex’s blood, stretched his spine and strolled out onto the porch of the vicarage. It was late afternoon now. There was barely enough time left for Gus and the ladies to reach Columbia before darkness overcame them. He’d already discussed sleeping arrangements with the minister. Buck would stay on the settee in the parlor with Rex, Sarah would sleep upstairs in the guestroom, and Jeffcoat’s men could sleep in the loft of the barn. They would set off for Columbia in the morning, provided Rex got through the night without complications.

Miriam was sitting in one of the porch rockers when Buck stepped outside.

“How is he?”

“Everything went well. Medically. How he recovers from what happened—”

“Is up to him,” she said, finishing his thought. “You did what you had to do and saved his life.”

“His life was never in real danger.”

“Because you were here. The Lord Provides, blessed be His name.”

Buck sagged into the other rocker. Exhausted.

“Gus is getting things ready, then we’ll be leaving,” Miriam said after a minute of silence. “Before we go, may I ask you a question?”

He nodded.

“Why did you want that horseshoe?”

“I’m not sure exactly,” he answered honestly. “It’s been there as long as I can remember, but every once in a while I’d catch Emma staring at it, and she’d get a funny expression on her face, as if it held some secret, special meaning for her.”

“Did you ever ask her about it?”

“Once, when I was a kid. She just smiled and said the horse it belonged to was going to carry her to bliss. I must have been pretty young, because I remember asking her where bliss was, on the other side of Columbia? She’d howled with laughter until I thought she was going to cry, then reminded me to always hang a horseshoe with the ends pointing up, otherwise all the good luck would fall out.”

Miriam smiled. “Even the unlucky need luck.”

Buck gazed over at her, at the melancholy expression in her brown eyes. “Is there more to this than it being just a common good-luck charm?”

She bowed her head, then continued. “We got to be friends in the weeks after she came to live with us. She and I had something in common, a long heritage as a people striving against oppression. She knew her days were numbered. Awareness didn’t make her sad. On the contrary, it allowed her to unburden herself about things she hadn’t shared with anyone in decades. I was happy to listen.”

Like the rabbi had been happy to listen to Asa pour out his soul. There was something special and cathartic, Buck was beginning to realize, in letting people ramble on about what was inside them.

“What did she tell you?”

Miriam grew pensive for a long moment as she peered into space, then she went on.

“His name was Marcellus Deeds. He was a free black from somewhere down around Savannah, came through here selling small musical instruments, reed pipes, flutes, castanets, that sort of thing. Also hand-carved figurines and other doo-dads. Made them all himself. Apparently he was quite talented with a knife.

“Emma was young then, maybe sixteen or seventeen—she wasn’t sure—but not more than twenty. She’d come to Jasmine with your momma, as her personal servant. Then Marcellus showed up on his buckboard. He was visiting all the local plantations, selling his wares to owners and overseers, anybody with money, mostly for their children. Penny flutes were a favorite.

“He and Emma hit it off on first sight. I reckon she was a fetching lass as a teenager. She figured Marcellus was maybe ten years older, in his mid-twenties—he probably didn’t know himself—and to hear her tell it, he was as bright and handsome as they came, quick-witted and smooth-talking with all the charm and self-confidence of a plantation owner’s son.”

Buck thought of Clay who fit that description perfectly.

“Marcellus hung around here longer than was profitable—he’d sold all anybody was going to buy—and he had to move on, but not before he’d proposed to Emma. They had two problems though. First, she was a slave owned by Mildred, and your momma wasn’t about to emancipate her. Second, Marcellus didn’t have the kind of money it would take to buy her freedom, ten-thousand dollars at least, when he was earning less than a hundred dollars cash a year. And that was assuming your poppa would even countenance selling her.”

“Especially to a black man,” Buck pointed out harshly. “Father had very definite ideas about people staying in their place and what they had a right to.”

“Nevertheless Marcellus swore he’d find a way to raise the money, that he’d come back, buy her freedom, they’d get married and go off, maybe out west, to raise a family of their own. He didn’t have a ring to give her, so before he left, he presented her with a baby Jesus he’d carved out of hickory as his token of their engagement.”

Buck stared at Miriam. “My God!” he exclaimed. “You’re not talking about the one Momma used in our Christmas crèche every year? Surely not that one.”

Miriam paused, then nodded. “When your momma discovered it among Emma’s things, she accused her of stealing it. Emma swore he’d given it to her and explained why. Mildred only half believed her is the way Emma explained it to me, so for safekeeping, to make sure nobody stole it from her, your momma took it and promised to return it to Emma when Marcellus came back for her.”

“I can’t believe Momma would—” Buck shook his head. “Did he?” But he already knew the answer.

“Emma never saw or heard from him again.”

Buck hung his head. “What happened to him?”

Miriam gave a fatalistic little shrug. “When Emma told me about Marcellus Deeds last month, I put out inquiries to see if any of my sources or their contacts had information about him, but it’s been forty years since he disappeared. Maybe he’d lied to her and never intended to come back. Maybe he died of a fever, had an accident, or was killed for some real or imagined offense. Free blacks have always lived precarious lives. Maybe he was a runaway slave posing as a freed man and got caught. There’s no telling. He might even have found someone else. Personally, I like to think he was sincere and something beyond his control prevented him from keeping his promise.”

“But she never forgot him,” Buck murmured, saddened by this new revelation.

Miriam nodded. “Emma was a smart woman. She’d figured out a long time ago he wasn’t coming back, but she couldn’t abandon all hope that someday he might turn up. I imagine every time an unfamiliar wagon pulled into the delivery yard her heart did a little lurch, wondering if it was him.”

Forty years of waiting for the man who’d promised her freedom. Freedom finally came, but too late for her to enjoy it. The man never did. May she rest in peace.

“What about the horseshoe? What does it have to do with this Marcellus Deeds?”

“Just before he left, his horse threw a shoe. He replaced it himself and tossed the old one in the junk pile. When your momma took the baby Jesus, Emma went to the pile and got the shoe and nailed it over her door. She took consolation in knowing no one would bother her about a worthless old, worn-out horseshoe.”

“And the baby Jesus?”

“She asked your poppa for it when your momma died, but Raleigh refused to give it to her, claimed she had no right to it. Emma looked for it after the house fire but never found it.”

Buck wasn’t unmindful of the irony. The big, imposing, proud plantation house had been destroyed, along with the graven image of the messiah who would come one day to set the world free of sin. Yet the tiny, insignificant, humble slave shack had survived, along with a rusted old useless piece of iron.

“Why didn’t Emma take the horseshoe with her when you brought her to your house?” he asked.

“After she told me her story, I asked her that very question. She said it didn’t matter anymore.”

So Emma had at last lost hope, yet Buck couldn’t imagine her falling into despair.

“After a lifetime of serving others,” he noted, “everything and everyone that had meant anything to her was gone.”

“Except you.” Miriam stated emphatically. “She liked the kind of man you’ve become, what you’ve done with your life, how you’ve always helped people.”

Would she have felt the same way if she’d found out he’d become a mankiller, that he’d killed Job’s uncle? He’d never know, and perhaps that was just as well. He’d done what he had to do, like cutting off men’s arms and legs while they screamed in agonizing pain. But hadn’t she delivered babies while their mommas screamed as well. Maybe she would understand after all.

What truly appalled him was his mother’s behavior. How could she have been so heartless as to take away the symbol of a young woman’s hope? Did she really think it would be stolen from Emma’s cabin? Or was this another example of the paternalism that was so ingrained and automatic in the slaveholding aristocracy? Safeguarding the delicately carved wooden figurine would have been one thing, but to then put it proudly on display every Christmas as if it were her own for all her friends to admire, in the very presence of the chattel-slave who had the moral claim on it, was, in Buck’s estimation, an act of inexcusable cruelty. Yet for thirty years Mildred Thomson had done exactly that, and during those same thirty years Emma had served her mistress faithfully and even warmly.

What an incredible woman she was. The parable of the widow’s mite wasn’t exactly right. Others didn’t give great treasure, they took it. But Emma still gave all she had. Buck recalled another verse from St Matthew: And the Master said, Well done, my good and faithful servant.

#

Gus ambled to the porch rail. “Miriam, we’re ready to leave. We need to hurry. I don’t want to be on the road after dark. We’ll drop Ruth off at her house on the way home.”

“Take Rex’s pistol with you,” Buck instructed him. “In case you run into trouble.”

“You’re thinking Drexel—”

“Highly unlikely,” Buck cut him off. “If he’s even gotten to Columbia from Charleston, I seriously doubt he knows where we are, so the likelihood of an ambush between here and there is not very high, but—”

“Better safe than sorry.”

“Amen.”

Miriam shot worried glances between the two men. “I have no problem with you carrying a gun,” she told her husband. “You may not be the crack shot Buck is, but you’re competent.”

“Thank you, my dear.”

She ignored the sarcasm. “However, I think it would be wise to keep the weapon hidden. The last time Ruth rode into Columbia—”

“You’re right, of course,” Gus said. “This day has been upsetting enough. She’s already concerned that Sarah isn’t going back with us.”

“We’ll be fine,” Buck assured her. “We have four men accompanying us, and they’re all armed.”

Ten minutes later, after a tearful farewell among the women, Gus shook the reins of the lead team and the caravan set off down the road, heading west.

As the day ended, the vicar served his guests a simple but wholesome supper. The three of them took turns checking on the patient whose pallet had been placed on the floor of the parlor in case he unconsciously made an effort to get up. They spoke of prosaic things, recounted a few bland recollections of days gone by and finally, exhausted by the day’s emotional events, turned in early. Buck wanted to kiss Sarah goodnight—and more—but circumstances mitigated against it.

#

Unfortunately things didn’t fall into place the way Randolph had planned. As the sun was setting, a closed carriage pulled up in front of the Grayson house. He watched the banker and his wife alight, followed by a young Negro girl, and a white boy. There was no sign of Sarah, her paramour, or her mother. Where the hell were they?

Chapter TWENTY-FOUR

The following morning Buck and Sarah set out with Rex in the hearse. Since the vehicle was not designed for comfort, they were forced to move slowly over the poorly maintained roads. Sarah accepted the task of administering laudanum to Rex periodically to minimize his distress.

Before they headed west, however, Buck insisted on a short detour back to Jasmine. It would add a few minutes to their journey, but he wanted one last time to see the place of his birth and the simple grave where Emma had been laid to her eternal rest.

Nothing had changed, but for the mound that marked her final home.

“Stop,” he suddenly shouted when they came in sight of the slave shacks.

He climbed out of the funeral carriage and approached the chinaberry tree. Someone had carved a single word in its thick trunk.

EMMA

He touched the shape of the horseshoe in his pocket. So much had happened here. So many lives spent. And for what? He rested his head against the rough bark. Was it all wasted?

He returned to the hearse. Sarah gave him a soft smile that beckoned for him to tell her his thoughts but said she would respect his privacy if he chose to say nothing.

In fact, they rode in silence for several miles.

“I’ve decided not to sell Jasmine,” he announced at last. “I’m not sure what I’ll do with it, but I can’t sell Emma’s home and mine, and Job’s patrimony.”

She placed her hand on his. “I’m glad. It’s your patrimony too.”

“It is, and God help me for it.”

#

Randolph had resumed his surveillance of the Grayson house shortly after sunrise. It was possible his fornicating wife had returned to the city during the night, but it was unlikely. Traveling after dark was hazardous in good times and these certainly weren’t. The doc would want to protect his “little woman,” which meant they’d be holed up somewhere. He didn’t care to think about what they might be doing.

He continued to watch the Grayson place but nothing happened. No one left, no one arrived. He was bored, but no more bored than he’d been sitting in a Yankee prison yard all day. At least now he had a hip flask to wet his whistle. It didn’t contain the quality liquor of his father’s crystal decanters—this was Monongahela, which would rot the guts of an Iroquois Indian—but it was better than nothing.

By noon he was fed up and decided to take a new approach.

If his wife and this doctor were having an illicit relationship, they might not stay at his friend’s house.

He checked the hotels outside the burned center of the city and finally discovered Dr. Thomson was registered at the Sand Hills.

“I’m glad I finally found him,” he told the white desk clerk. “We were in the war together and lost track of each other in the last hectic days after the fighting stopped. Was his lady with him?”

The clerk hesitated, no doubt mindful of his employer’s instructions to be discreet about their guests and associates. Randolph produced a silver dollar and started slipping it across the marble counter.

“He registered by himself,” the clerk informed him, his eyes on the hard currency. “But he’s staying in the John C Calhoun suite, which is quite large.”

“He always was a man of tastes. Any idea when he’ll be returning?” He kept his finger on the silver piece.

“No, sir.”

“Well, I’ll catch up with him later.” He made a small circling motion with the coin. “Is that all you can tell me?”

“That’s all I know, sir.”

Randolph grunted, pocketed the money, turned and walked out.

#

Buck, Sarah and Rex arrived in Columbia shortly after noon. Rex had tolerated the trip well, with the aid of a few sips of laudanum administered at regular intervals by Sarah. They went directly to Ruth’s house a quarter mile from the Grayson residence. Ruth had plenty of room, a full staff of servants and eager willingness to nurse the crippled young man who had no immediate family in the city.

The funeral carriage drawing up outside her front door stirred a few of the neighbors’ lace curtains and no doubt occasioned shocked comments behind them, especially when a living man was carried into the house instead of a dead person being carted out.

Rex was settled in the back parlor downstairs. Sarah would stay upstairs in a room next to her mother’s. The two women planned to take turns seeing to their houseguest’s needs.

“You’re obviously in very competent hands, my friend,” Buck told Rex after checking his sutures one more time. “And since you are, I have no qualms about leaving you to go to my hotel and get cleaned up. You have enough laudanum to tide you over till I get back with a fresh supply.”

“I’m very grateful, Buck. If there’s ever anything I can do—”

“Rest and get well—” he patted his patient’s shoulder “—and be nice to your nurses.”

The hearse driver had left Gypsy and Scamp tied to a hitching post. He rode his gelding and led the stallion—whom he suspected wouldn’t be a stallion much longer—to the Sand Hills Hotel livery stable. On the way he stopped at an apothecary shop and purchased two flagons of laudanum and several rolls of bandages. He was anticipating a hot bath and shave, followed by a short nap before returning to Ruth’s house.

“Good afternoon, doctor,” the clerk at the desk said as he reached into one of the cubbyholes behind him for Buck’s room key. “Oh, you had a visitor a couple of hours ago, said he’d catch up with you later. Did he find you?”

“A visitor?” Perhaps Gus had stopped by. “Did he give his name?”

“No, sir. And I didn’t recognize him. Not one of the locals.”

“What did he look like?”

He pursed his lips. “About your size and build. Rather coarse and weathered looking, if I may say so, but spoke like a gentleman. Said you were friends from the war. Had a Charleston accent.”

“A Charleston accent, you say?” The only person he knew with anything resembling a Charleston accent was Asa, but he was several inches shorter than Buck and smaller in build. As much as Buck liked and admired the young man, no one would credit him with speaking like a gentleman. Then it hit him and a shiver ran down his spine. This could be but one person. “Did he say what he wanted to see me about?”

“No, sir. He was very insistent on learning when you’d be returning though. Naturally I—”

“Did he happen to mention where he was going from here?”

The clerk shook his head. “Only that he would catch up with you later.” He offered Buck his key. “Will you be wanting—”

Ignoring the key and the rest of the question, Buck ran out the door and around the corner to the stable.

“I need Gypsy immediately,” he told the livery man.

“Now? Sir, he’s all wet. I was bathing him like you told me.”

Buck muttered a curse under his breath. “What about Scamp?”

“Getting ready to do him now.”

Buck didn’t like riding stallions, and Rex’s had already proved untrustworthy, but he had no choice. “Saddle him, and quickly.”

“Whatever you say, sir.”

The groom was probably not being intentionally slow, but the simple process of getting the horse from his stall, putting on his bridle and bit, the saddle blanket, then the saddle itself seemed to take an eternity. The horse kept skittering around too, further slowing the process. During that time, Buck checked the pistol he’d been carrying in his coat pocket for the last two days. Five bullets. That should be enough.

#

Randolph returned to the Grayson house in time to see the elderly couple, whom he recognized from the previous day, presumably the banker and his wife, leave the house on foot. Should he follow them or should he keep the house under surveillance? Where were they going? Where were Sarah and her lover? Did they have a private nest of their own? Restlessness won out. Randolph trailed behind the old folks from a discreet distance on the other side of the street.

Fifteen minutes later the pair rang the doorbell of a fine house on Pendleton. A few moments later it was opened by the witch herself, Ruth Greenwald.

Well, it looks like I struck the mother lode. Wherever momma is, dear, sweet Sarah can’t be far away. Now all I have to do is sip and wait.

He removed the silver flask from his hip pocket and took a swig. Was Dr. Thomson already inside with her, or were they off somewhere doing things that weren’t respectable? He twisted his mouth at the taste of the Monongahela. As Sarah Drexel’s husband he was entitled to her estate, which had no doubt increased considerably in size following her father’s death. Franklin had told Randolph all about it, and his attempt to lay claim. Nice try, Poppa. No matter. Soon Randolph would be enjoying bourbon at least as good as his old man’s.

He’d just replaced the flask in his pocket when the front door opened again and the well-dressed couple emerged. Randolph’s heart lurched. This time it wasn’t Ruth at the door but Sarah. It had been more than two years since he’d seen her. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. While he was languishing in a filthy Yankee prison, how many other men had she been sharing her favors with? Smiling, she stood at the open door for a moment and waved to her guests as they strolled back the way they’d come. They passed within five feet of where he was pressed against a brick pillar. His heart was pounding now, from the danger, from the excitement, but mostly in anticipation of what was to come. He craved action, the kind that only violence and women could satisfy.

Should he charge into the house after her? Was Thomson inside? Randolph still didn’t know. Did it make any difference? She was there. Ruth was there. Two out of three. When he was finished with them he wouldn’t have any trouble finding the elusive Dr. Thomson. In fact, the doc would be looking for him, which was fine.

He was about to cross the street and ring the doorbell when he heard the hoof beats of an approaching rider. He darted back into his hiding place. A dappled gray stallion trotted to the Greenwald house and the rider dismounted. Randolph examined him carefully. Tall and slender, lithe on his feet, and broad shouldered. He carried himself with the aristocratic arrogance of someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth. This had to be Buck Thomson, medical doctor and lecher.

Even before the plantation owner’s son reached the front door, it flew open and Sarah smiled in welcome, took his hand and led him inside. The door closed discreetly.

Randolph tamped down the flare of temper that threatened to expose him. It was time for what the army called reconnaissance. Looking both ways down the tree-lined street, and seeing his path clear, he rapidly crossed over to the corner of the house. Skulking down the length of it, he peered through the ground-floor windows. Every room he viewed was empty of people—until he reached the one at the end. He couldn’t be sure he heard voices, but the possibility that he had made him more circumspect. He inched up to the sill and peeked inside.

The man who’d arrived a few minutes ago was sitting on the foot of a narrow bed, changing the dressing on a man’s leg, or more precisely the stump of his leg. Sarah was standing at the head of the bed, pulling the cork from a blue bottle. Probably laudanum, Randolph concluded. Well, Mr. One-Leg wasn’t going to be any trouble at all.

He felt that thrill of anticipation. They were all here. Dr. Thomson. Sweet Sarah and her bitch of a mother. The old bat probably didn’t consider it ladylike to see a man’s stump. He watched her leave the room. A moment later, through the open door to the hall, he caught a glimpse of her black dress ascending the staircase. Randolph snickered. She probably had her own stash of laudanum in her bedroom to calm her delicate nerves. Delicate, my foot. He looked at the man in the bed and almost laughed out loud.

He took another gulp from his bottle. Time to claim what was his.

#

“Excuse me, Miz Sarah,” the butler said from the doorway, “but there’s a man outside sneaking through the bushes around the house and peeping in the windows.”

Buck’s head shot up. That could mean only one person. Randolph had found them. The shock on Sarah’s face was unmistakable. What concerned Buck even more was the flash of fear he caught in her eyes.

“Sarah, go upstairs immediately and stay with your mother. Don’t come down till I tell you it’s safe.”

“But—” she seemed momentarily paralyzed “—but what about Rex’s laudanum?”

“Please don’t argue. There’s no time to lose.”

“You think it’s Randolph?” She knew it was.

“We can’t take any chances. Now please go. I’ll stay here with Rex.” He turned to the butler. “Make sure the doors and windows are all locked and the shades drawn. Hurry.”

“Yessir.” Duncan didn’t ask the questions Buck could see on his face. He turned back into the hall. Sarah was right behind him. Buck was about to start rewrapping Rex’s stump when there was a crash and the sound of shattering glass exploding from the rear of the house.

“Don’t move,” a man’s gruff voice ordered. “Anybody who twitches gets shot.”

Sarah glanced at Buck through the doorway. Her eyes were wide and said it all. It’s him. It’s Randolph. You were right.

Small consolation. Buck reached for the Colt in his coat pocket.

“Thomson,” the intruder shouted defiantly. “Get out here with your hands up or I’ll shoot her.”

Buck weighed his options. There weren’t many. He quickly leaned over Rex, slipped his hand under the covers and whispered a few hasty words. Whether Rex understood what he said wasn’t clear. Buck was about to ask him when Randolph bellowed out a new command.

“You got three seconds, doc. One. Two—”

“Coming!” Buck bolted to the doorway and out into the hall with his hands raised. He positioned himself at Sarah’s side.

Duncan had backed into a corner by the staircase, his hands extended high over his head.

“How many servants you got here?” Randolph asked, his gun still pointed directly at Sarah.

“Just me and the cook, massa.”

“Call her.”

“Rosie? Rosie, come here.” His voice was unsteady.

A woman’s gray-haired head appeared from the kitchen door at the other end of the dining room.

“Tell her to get out here,” Randolph repeated harshly.

“Rosie.” Duncan’s voice trembled.

The black woman, who wasn’t up to the butler’s shoulder in height, approached with hands wrapped in her apron.

“Where does that lead to?” Randolph nodded to the small portal under the stairs.

“To the cellar, sir,” Duncan replied.

“Both of you, go down there and be quiet. Understand?”

“Yessir,” he said. The woman shied like a whipped dog as she circled toward it. Seconds later their feet could be heard clattering down the wooden steps.

Randolph moved over to the portal door and slammed it, then shot the outside bolt. His focus on Sarah hadn’t wavered. “Now, my dear adulterous wife, it’s time for you—”

“You know, Randolph, I liked you a lot better when you were dead.”

“Sarah,” Buck cautioned under his breath, but she wasn’t listening. He saw Randolph raise his gun and take a step back as his finger tightened on the trigger.

Suddenly there was an explosion at his feet.

Randolph stared down at a shattered flowerpot but quickly regained his composure before glancing up to the landing above. “Come on down here, Ruth. Damn you.”

No sound.

“If you don’t come down in the next five seconds, I’ll shoot your daughter. Maybe kill her or just let her suffer. One. Two—”

“I’m coming. I’m coming,” Ruth protested.

She descended the regal staircase slowly, arthritically, one painful step at a time. Buck understood what she was doing, stalling, no doubt in the hope that the distraction would give him an opportunity to draw his pistol.

“Stand over there with your daughter and her boyfriend,” Randolph ordered her when she finally reached the bottom of the stairs.

Ruth clung to Sarah’s waist.

“My, what a cozy little family y’all make.”

“Help me, damn it,” Rex shouted angrily. Everybody’s eyes turned toward the sickroom. “My leg’s bleeding. Bad.”

Was it? Buck wondered. It hadn’t been a minute ago.

“The pain,” Rex cried out. “It’s killing me. I need laudanum.”

“But—” Sarah started to say before she caught herself.

“Help me. God, I’m bleeding bad.”

“You’ve got to let Dr. Thomson help the poor man,” Ruth pleaded. “He has nothing to do with this.”

“Somebody . . . you got to stop the bleeding. I don’t want to die. Please, somebody help me. Buck, please.”

“Randolph, really,” Ruth said, as if speaking to a child. “He’s innocent. The poor man’s—”

“God damn it,” Rex cursed in exasperation. “First you cut off my leg and now you’re letting me bleed to death. Oh God, why? What did I ever do to you?”

Randolph appeared both confused by the situation and angry at the distraction from the other room.

“I’m dying in here.” Rex was sobbing now. “I’m in pain. And not one of you bastards will help me. Please, at least give me something for the pain. P-l-e-a-s-e. God, it hurts.”

At last Randolph seemed to make up his mind. He waved his gun toward the door. “All of you, in there. Now.”

Rex was wailing. “I’m in pain.” He moaned. “I’m bleeding bad.” He sounded pathetic. “I’m dying.” He implored piteously. “Help me!”