Bounty Hunter

CHAPTER 13

The sound of wagon wheels creaking brought Luke out of his stupor. Rain still fell, but it was definitely not pouring down as hard.

The wheels stopped, and he heard a thud as somebody jumped down from the wagon. Footsteps ran over to him.

“You ain’t dead, are you, Mr. Jensen?” Emily asked.

He opened his eyes and lifted his head. “I’m . . . still here,” he croaked.

Emily bent down to look at him. “Good.” Then she turned her head to call, “He’s still alive, Grampaw!”

“I’m glad to hear it,” replied a voice cracked with age. “I’d hate to think you dragged me out in this rain for nothin’! My rheumatiz don’t like this damp weather at all.”

Luke looked past Emily and saw a man with long white hair and a drooping white mustache coming toward them. The years had bent him some, but he was still fairly tall and his shoulders were broad with strength. He reminded Luke of a thick-trunked old oak tree draped with moss.

“Let’s roll him onto his back so I can get hold of him under his arms and drag him,” the old man suggested.

“We can pick him up and carry him,” Emily said. “I’ll help you.”

“No, the other way will be easier,” her grandfather insisted.

“He said he’d been shot in the back. Draggin’ him like that’s liable to hurt him even worse.”

The old man frowned. “You might be right about that,” he admitted. “All right, get on that side of him. I can take most of the weight, but you’ll have to support some of it.”

“I’ve got it.” Emily moved to loop both arms around Luke’s right arm in a secure grip.

Her grandfather took Luke’s left arm in the same fashion. “All right, you ready? Lift!”

With grunts of effort, they straightened, hauling Luke upright for the first time since the night before. Emily’s feet slipped a little in the mud as the strain of his weight hit her, but she managed to keep her balance and didn’t lose her grip on him.

“This’d sure be easier if you could walk, mister,” the burly old-timer said, “but since you can’t . . .”

Half dragging, half carrying him, they started toward the wagon, which Luke saw had a team of four rawboned mules hitched to it. They looked like pretty sorry specimens and the wagon wasn’t much better. Every step the old man and Emily took sent pain jolting through him, but he gritted his teeth and didn’t cry out. He recalled how he had screamed after Potter shot him, and the memory filled him with shame. He wasn’t going to let himself act like that in front of Emily Sue Peabody and her grandfather.

That wasn’t the only shame he felt. The knowledge that he had driven right into that ambush, had lost the Confederacy’s gold, and gotten his friends killed had started to gnaw at him. He had known good and well there was a chance Wiley Potter and the others would double back and make a try for the bullion. For a couple days he had watched very closely for any signs of an ambush.

But he guessed he’d let his guard down, especially while he was concentrating on getting the wagon up the steep slope of the riverbank. All it had taken was that moment of carelessness, and he had lost everything.

Well, not everything, he corrected himself. He was still alive, even if just barely. Remy, Dale, and Edgar couldn’t say that much. The guilt Luke felt because of that ate at his insides all the more.

When they reached the wagon, the old man said, “Mister, you grab on to the sideboard and help hold yourself up whilst Emily puts the tailgate down. Hop to it, girl.”

Luke grasped the side of the wagon as tightly as he could. When Emily had the tailgate lowered, they helped him around to it and lowered him facedown over the gate. Luke’s weight kept him there while they lifted the lower half of his body and shoved him into the wagon bed.

That hurt like hell, too.

“I can see where the bullet tore his shirt,” the old-timer commented. “Looks like the rain washed out most of the blood. Maybe it did the same for the wound. If it didn’t, he’ll likely die of blood poisonin’ in a day or two.”

“Grampaw!” Emily said.

“Just tellin’ you the truth of it,” her grandfather said. “I’ll wager the fella’s already thought of that his own self.”

“I ... have,” Luke gasped from where he lay with the side of his face pressed against the rough boards of the wagon bed. “I appreciate you . . . trying to save my life anyway.”

“It was the girl’s idea,” the old man said. “I got no use for either side in this war. Haven’t ever since it took my boy and my two grandsons.”

That explained the bitter undertone in the old-timer’s voice, Luke thought, as well as Emily’s comment that her grandfather didn’t want to get involved in the Yankees and the Confederates shooting each other. He thought he had already lost enough to the fighting, and he was probably right about that.

Luke didn’t consider himself a Confederate anymore, not after the way he’d let down the cause by losing that gold. But it didn’t really matter since, as Emily’s grandfather had mentioned, he expected to die from his wound in the next few days.

He would worry about guilt when and if he survived.

“Might be a good idea if you was to climb up there with him and hold him as still as you can,” the old man told Emily. “It’s gonna be a rough ride, and bumpin’ around’s just gonna hurt him worse.”

“You’re right.” She climbed into the wagon bed and sat down next to Luke. Her grandfather got on the seat and took up the reins, yelling at the mules and slapping them with the lines until they lurched forward into a walk.

The jarring motion sent fresh bursts of agony through Luke’s body, just as the old-timer had predicted. His breath hissed between clenched teeth, but again he managed not to yell. Emily lay down beside him and put her arm around his shoulders, hanging on tightly to brace him against the wagon’s rocking and bouncing.

He couldn’t help being aware of the warmth of her torso pressed to his. If he responded to it, he didn’t know it, but somehow it comforted him anyway. Gradually the pain eased a bit.

He didn’t know how far it was to their destination or how long it took to get there, but finally the wagon came to a halt.

“We’re here,” Emily said. “This is our farm.”

Luke felt the wagon shift as the old man got down from the seat. A moment later Luke heard the tailgate drop and felt himself moving. He knew the old-timer had taken hold of his feet to drag him out of the wagon, even though he couldn’t feel the grip.

The rain had tapered off to a drizzle. It was late in the afternoon and darkness was coming on quickly, earlier than usual because of the overcast sky. As they lifted him from the wagon, Luke saw a rectangle of yellow light and recognized it as an open doorway. The glow from a lantern spilled out from the room beyond the door.

Emily and her grandfather wrestled him inside.

The old man said, “We better get him outta these wet duds, or he’ll catch the grippe for sure. He don’t need that on top of ever’thing else. I ought to take a look at that bullet hole in his back, too.”

“You think you can help him, Grampaw?”

“You want me to, don’t you?”

“Well . . . yeah, if you can.”

“One thing I got to know first.” The old man hung on to Luke’s arm, but moved enough so he could peer into Luke’s face. “Are the Yankees gonna come lookin’ for you, mister? Is helpin’ you gonna get me and my granddaughter killed?”

“The Yankees . . . don’t know I exist,” Luke whispered.

That might not be exactly true—there might still be patrols searching for eight or nine men with two wagons—but the Yankees would have no interest in a lone man with what was probably a mortal wound in his back. The bodies of Remy, Dale, and Edgar had surely washed downstream, Luke realized, and when they were found, likely they would be miles from there.

He figured Emily and her grandfather would be safe enough having him. If the Yankees had left them alone so far, they’d have no reason to bother them now.

“All right,” the old man said. “I hope you’re tellin’ the truth. I’ll hold him up, gal. Get a knife and cut them clothes off him. That’ll be the easiest way to do it.”

Luke was in too much pain to worry about the girl seeing him naked. Anyway, he’d seen her wearing nothing but that soaked woolen shirt, so he supposed turnabout was fair play, as the old saying went.

He heard the faint sound of a sharp blade cutting through fabric. His clothes fell away from him. A chill went through him, and he started to shiver.

“Get somethin’ and dry him off,” the old man said as he struggled to keep Luke upright. “Then we’ll put him in my bunk.”

Luke felt her drying his torso. When she moved around behind him, he heard her sharp intake of breath. He figured she had spotted the wound low down on his back.

“It don’t look too good, Grampaw.”

“I wouldn’t expect it to. Come on, we need to get him warmed up some.”

Emily finished drying him, and they carried him over to a bunk. As they lowered him face-first onto it, Luke heard a rustling sound that told him the mattress was stuffed with corn husks.

Even with nothing but a rough blanket covering it, it felt wonderful. He let his face sink into the softness.

His head jerked up a second later as something prodded into the wound in his back. His lips drew back from his teeth in a pained grimace.

“Looks like the bullet’s still in there,” the old man said. “It’ll have to come out, but not now. The hole’s already festerin’ too much. Fetch me that jug o’ corn.”

“You don’t need to get drunk, Grampaw,” Emily said.

He snorted. “I ain’t plannin’ to drink it. It’ll clean out that wound better’n anythin’ else we got.”

After hearing that, Luke knew what to expect. But he groaned anyway, a moment later, when the liquid fire of the corn liquor burned into his back and seemingly all the way through to the core of his being. Something poked into the wound again, probably the old man’s fingers, he guessed.

That was confirmed when the old-timer said, “I can feel the bullet. Should be able to get it. But not yet. I’ll dig it out in a day or two . . . if he’s still alive.”

“He’ll be alive,” Emily said. “I’m gonna see to that.”

“Why in Tophet do you care so much whether this varmint lives or dies? You don’t even know him.”

“I know his name,” Emily said softly. “That’s enough for now.”

The pain eased a little, and Luke let out the breath he had been holding. As the long sigh escaped him, his eyes closed.

Exhaustion caught up to him, crashing down like a hammer, and once again he knew nothing but darkness.