if she even realized who he was.
“Can’t… Dizzy, bleeding…” she said, and then some spasm seemed to seize her and she clutched her abdomen and moaned.
Cal hadn’t seen the blood at first because of the black widow’s weeds she was wearing, but as he started to scoop her up off the floor he felt the warm dampness on the back of her skirts and saw the crimson stain of blood on his forearm.
“Olivia! What’s happening? Are you—are you…” How did one delicately ask a lady if she were losing the baby he wasn’t supposed to acknowledge she was carrying?
Her eyelids fluttered open and she gazed at his face as if puzzled for a few seconds. “Yes…I’m miscarrying. And do you know what? I’m…glad….”
Her announcement stunned him. “You’re miscarrying? Lord God, Livy, you need a doctor! I’ll get him— where is he?”
“Right in town…next to the bank. But he won’t come…hates me, too…”
“I don’t care. You need help, so he’s going to have to see you,” he told her, but then realized she couldn’t hear him, for she had passed out.
For a moment he considered what he should do. Livy’s pulse was rapid, faint, and her skin felt cool and clammy. The port-wine flood beneath her was growing. He thought about riding hell-for-leather back down the road to the doctor’s, but did he dare leave her for so long while he went to persuade some stiff-necked hypocrite to do his medical duty? Deciding the answer was no, he strode back down the hall, grabbed an afghan he’d seen folded up on the back of a horsehair sofa and wrapped it around Livy, then lifted her and carried her to where Blue stood tied under a tree.
Galloping back into town with her cradled in his arms, he found the bank at the center of town and the doctor’s office in the building that stood just next to it, as Livy had said.
The chairs in the small waiting room were fully occupied by a woman and her handful of children, all of whom gaped at the sight of the stranger who strode in carrying the town’s most notorious female.
“Mama! That man’s got a patch on his eye like a pirate, and the lady’s bleedin’!” one boy cried. He pointed at the trail of blood behind Cal, causing his mother to gasp and pull him against her ample bosom.
“The doctor—where is he?” Cal demanded curtly, when it seemed the woman was only going to stare in horror.
She pointed to the door at the other end of the waiting room. “In there. But you’ll have to wait, just like we are. He—he has a patient—”
Cal didn’t wait. He strode over to the door and called through it, “Doc, I got a sick woman here—she needs help now.”
“Be with you in a few minutes,” a raspy voice answered in a disinterested fashion.
That wasn’t going to be good enough. Cal steadied his unconscious burden, then kicked the door open, surprising the elderly sawbones and his “patient,” another elderly gent who sat opposite the doctor across the examining table, on which lay a checkerboard and checkers.
Cal kicked the game off the table, sending the wooden disks flying.
“Now wait just a minute, stranger. You can’t—” began the doctor, putting down a bottle of whiskey.
“This woman needs your help now,” he told the astonished sawbones as he laid Livy gently down on the now-empty examining table. “I think she’s losing her baby.”
Recovering his professional poise, the doctor bustled over to his patient, while the other old man continued to stare with undisguised curiosity.
“But that’s Miz Gillespie!” the doctor said in consternation after he saw her face. He seemed to freeze in place.
“You got a problem with her name, Doc?” snapped Cal, allowing his hand to hover suggestively near the gun on his hip. “Seems to me it doesn’t matter who she is right now, just that she needs your help. And I’ll pay your fee, if that’s the problem.”
The doctor stared at the gun, then back at Cal’s face. “I guess you’re right, Mr.—?”
“Caleb Devlin.”
“Mr. Devlin. Very well, then, I’ll see what’s to be done. Hap, we’ll finish our, uh, business later,” he said to the other old man. “Why don’t you show Mr. Devlin back out to the waiting room?”
“I don’t think—” began Cal.
But the doctor was very much in command now. “Go on, you can’t wait in here, even if you was this woman’s husband, which I believe you ain’t. Go on out to the waiting room. And you tell that Ginny Petree an’ her endless brood a brats with sore throats that it’s gonna be awhile.”
Cal retreated, but he knew he wasn’t going to be able to remain in the tiny waiting room with half a dozen children studying his eye patch while their mama stared pointedly at the dried blood on his arm and the dark red splotches on the floor. He went on outside and stood stroking Blue’s nose at the hitching post, wishing there was something he could do while he waited.
As if in answer, a shot rang out inside the bank building next door, and a heartbeat later, a woman screamed. Then her screams blended with shouting, just as three masked men dashed out of the bank, one of them carrying an obviously full, heavy gunnysack.
Even as Cal tensed to respond, the sheriff came running out of his office opposite the bank, drawing his gun. He aimed, fired, and one of the bandits, the one carrying the gunnysack, went down with a hoarse cry. But then one of his partners fired, even as the other one snatched up the gunnysack, and Cal saw the weathered old face of the sheriff go rigid with agony as he clutched his chest and fell, measuring his length in the dusty street.
Everyone else who had been on the street had taken cover, Cal noted as he took aim over the withers of his horse. Good, then his shot wouldn’t be apt to hit an innocent person. He fired, and his shot dropped the man who had gunned down the sheriff.
Cal hadn’t shot at a man since the first half of the war, but evidently his practice had paid off, he thought grimly as the outlaw fell.
Now the only one alive, the third bandit looked wildly in Cal’s direction before yanking his mount’s reins from the hitching post. He aimed a wild shot that whistled harmlessly past Cal, then vaulted into the saddle, still clutching the gunnysack by its drawstrings, and spurred his horse. “Hyaaah! Giddap!”
The world narrowed to the back of that fleeing outlaw as Cal took aim again. He fired as the horse hit a full gallop, and saw the bloody hole appear in the outlaw’s upper back. The man’s arms flailed wide, dropping the gunnysack. Coins spilled out the loose top and into the dirt. Boneless as a rag doll, the man fell from the saddle, landing with a thud. The horse galloped on.
In the momentary silence that followed, punctuated only by the pounding hoofbeats, Cal was barely aware of the faces plastered at every window as he holstered his gun. It was over. The outlaws were all dead.
A moment later there was an explosion of noise as people shoved and elbowed their way out of the bank, the general store, the saloon and into the street, hollering back and forth to one another about what had just taken place. A couple of men went to the fallen sheriff, turned him gently over, and when they saw there was nothing to be done, closed his eyes. They did likewise for the bandits who had died just outside the bank. But the rest of the townspeople started to clap and cheer.
“That was some shooting, mister!” someone cried ‘ out.
“He can see to shoot better with just one eye than most men can with both a theirs!” Cal heard an excited youth say. The boy ran the few yards to the body of the bandit