my God,” Dr. Woodward yelled. “Was my sister hurt? If she’s back at the station in pain, I’ll hold someone accountable. We have to hurry!”
“No.” Wynn turned back to the doc. “She’s asleep right now. I brought her with me when I escaped in the rain. I figured her chances would be better than at the station once the rain stopped. We followed the stream behind the station for a few miles, then climbed over those hills.”
Devin Woodward didn’t look like he believed the Ranger.
McCord added, “She’s quite a little soldier.”
“You let her leave with you!” Dr. Woodward turned his anger on the Ranger. “You dragged a woman out in a storm and across those hills? Good God, man, you could have killed her.”
McCord’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t drag her anywhere. Your sister is a strong woman who knows her own mind.”
“My sister is an idiot. If she’d had any brains, she would have married and not taken on nursing as her cause. She’s wasted her youth running from battle to battle during the war, and now will probably be my burden to bear for the rest of her life.”
McCord thought of hitting the doc. One good punch should put him out for a while. Anna looked to be almost in her thirties and Woodward appeared to be just past twenty. He’d been too young to fight. He couldn’t know how many men lived because of nurses who worked round the clock in roofless field hospitals and old barns turned into surgery stations. The doctors might have done the cutting and the patching, but it had been the nurses who bandaged and fought fevers and held men as they faced death.
Wynn looked toward the cottonwood and silently swore.
Anna, her back straight and his coat folded over her arm, walked slowly toward the men. The face that had shown such fire when she’d been mad at him, which was most of the time he’d known her, now looked stone cold, as if no emotion would ever reflect in her features. Only her eyes looked tired and sad, very sad.
“There you are!” Woodward shouted. “You had us all worried to death.” He didn’t move toward her but waited for her to join them. “I’d hoped to start setting up the infirmary today, but from the looks of you, we’ll have to put it off until tomorrow.”
McCord balled his fists. Just two punches. One to the doc’s face, leaving him unwilling to talk around a busted lip and a few missing teeth, and one to his gut to knock some of the wind out of him. Couldn’t he see that his sister had just walked through hell to get to him? Couldn’t he imagine how frightened she must have been, and how brave?
The sergeant stepped past McCord and moved to Anna. “Are you all right, ma’am? Ranger McCord told me what an ordeal you had last night and I’m surprised you’re still standing. May I be of some service to you?”
McCord saw her glance at the stripes on Dirk’s sleeve before answering, “Thank you, Sergeant. You are kind.”
Dirk Cunningham might be an old fighter, but there was enough Southern gentleman in him to know how to treat a lady. They left the doc standing in the trail as they moved to the troops still in their saddles.
“I need three good men to go with me back to the station and check on things.” McCord fell into step on the other side of Anna. He could hear the doc following, asking questions and demanding answers, but no one listened.
The sergeant nodded. “I got two good boys you’ll know, and a Yank who can shoot a flea off a rabbit’s ear at a hundred yards. He’s just a kid, so keep him out of any close scraps if you can, but he’d be good at lying low and covering your back.”
McCord understood what Dirk wasn’t saying as much as what he was. The “good boys” were Texans, probably ex-rebs, who could take care of themselves. The kid, a Private Clark, was green, but his skill could come in handy.
Cunningham helped Anna onto one of the extra horses the men had brought along. There was no time to say anything to her as McCord closed his hand over hers when he handed her the reins. He’d have to do his talking to the sergeant. “Take care of her, Dirk. She’s a real trooper.”
The sergeant nodded, understanding the Ranger’s compliment. He turned to the doctor. “Awaiting your order to ride, sir.”
Dr. Woodward straightened as if just remembering that he was the one in charge. “Go ahead, Sergeant. Start back. I’ll have a word with the Ranger first and join you.” When he faced McCord, the Ranger was already moving toward an extra horse and the three men waiting for him.
“I have a few questions,” Woodward demanded.
McCord swung up on his mount. “Well, I’m all out of answers.” He did wonder why so many folks seemed to be starting conversations with him lately with that statement. “Why don’t you ride back to the stage station with us and maybe you’ll find your answers?”
“I think I’ll just do that.” Dr. Woodward climbed on his horse. “I plan to ask the other passengers if you forced my sister to go with you, and if you did, sir, I’ll have you know, I plan…”
McCord didn’t listen to more. He and the three soldiers were a hundred yards ahead of the doctor before he could get his horse moving. The soldiers stayed right with Wynn, enjoying the entertainment of watching the little doctor try to keep up with them.
When they reached the station, McCord could read all the answers in the tracks, but he said nothing. He waved Clark, the sharpshooter, in from where he’d been hiding in case they’d been riding into a trap, and they all waited for the doctor.
The soldiers stayed on guard while McCord let Dr. Woodward storm into the stage station first. Two minutes later, he ran out and threw up at the side of the porch. “They’re both dead!” the doctor said.
One of the soldiers swung from his horse and read the ground as easily as he might a headline in the paper. “Looks like there were ten or more of them. I’m guessing they came in fast.” He scratched his head. “No shells in the mud, so they didn’t come in firing.”
McCord stood at the door and looked in. “The driver and station manager were already dead by the time Thorn and his men rode in.”
“How do you know that?”
“There’s half a dozen spent shells scattered among the cards by the table. One man who was here last night is missing. A gambler who called himself Frank Sanders. My guess is he shot the others, waited for a while to make sure I didn’t come running from the barn, then lit out with the mailbag. I heard a horse traveling fast sometime before dawn.”
Dr. Woodward wiped his mouth. “If this gambler killed those two, why did the gang ride in?”
McCord shrugged. “Maybe they thought the gambler left something behind. Maybe he took something they wanted. If so, they’re after him and not us.”
“So if we go after the gambler, we might just find this Thorn bandit everyone talks about.”
McCord nodded.
Dr. Woodward straightened and tried to pull himself together. “The flaw in your plan, Ranger, seems to be we have no idea where this gambler went.”
“I don’t have to go after him,” McCord answered. “I know where he’s headed.”
Woodward frowned. “And where might that be, Ranger McCord?”
“Camp Supply. Two people saw him and now know he’s part of Thorn’s gang. He’ll be heading to try to permanently silence me and your sister.”
Chapter 5
Annalane fought to keep awake enough to stay in the saddle as she rode, surrounded by soldiers, toward Camp Supply. The land rolled over low hills covered in the green of early spring, and she wondered how such beauty could ever hold danger.
Sergeant Cunningham fussed over her. When they reached the camp, he showed