Jason seemed to calm with having something to do. He moved beneath one arm of the sheriff and tried to pull his part of the load as they half carried, half dragged the wounded man across to the table.

Straining, they lifted the sheriff onto the end of the long table and rolled him onto his back.

‘‘Get blankets and a pillow,’’ Allie ordered. ‘‘Then build up the fire, and see if you can find a few more lanterns.’’

Allie unbuckled his gunbelt and draped it over one of the kitchen chairs. Pulling her knife from her boot, she slit the material covering his leg. As the bloody fabric peeled away, Allie saw a jagged rip in the flesh and a bone, snapped like a twig.

She stood back and tried to breathe without the thick smell of blood filling her lungs. She’d gutted animals, she’d even seen babies born, but now blood seemed to be everywhere. Warm, red blood. Her fingers were covered in it, and her dress stained.

‘‘Holy…’’ Jason whistled behind her. ‘‘That looks terrible!’’

Allie swallowed hard. ‘‘No worse than an animal’s insides.’’ She forced herself to look at the break. ‘‘All we have to do is straighten out the bone and sew up the gash.’’ That sounded like a plan. Simple, just straighten a bone and close the opening. How hard could that be?

Jason moved an inch closer16.‘‘And stop the bleeding and put all the bloody parts back in order. And hope the sheriff don’t die before we get through. Who knows,maybe as bad as this is, it’s the bump on his head that will kill him.’’

They both glanced at the old man’s face. The bump did look bad, but there was nothing Allie could do about it.

Hardy looked ready for the funeral fire now. He was either too drunk or too hurt to feel any pain, which could be good. Allie didn’t care which-she just wanted her doctoring not to kill him. But if she didn’t do something, he would surely die from the rate blood poured out of him. So she had to try.

She remembered seeing the way Adam had sewn up Wes when he’d been shot in the back. She could do that part, she told herself. As for the other, she wasn’t sure. It wouldn’t do much good to sew him up if the bone just poked another hole in his flesh as soon as he moved.

Jason took short quick breaths and turned whiter the longer he stared. ‘‘How much more blood you reckon he’s got in him?’’

‘‘Enough.’’ She prayed she spoke the truth. ‘‘

‘‘Get water and something to use for bandages,’’ Allie ordered, hoping to keep Jason from being her next patient. She moved around the room looking for something to use for sewing. The room only had an old desk and a round-toppped trunk. In the trunk they found women’s clothes and a small sewing kit. After Jason brought the water, he set about ripping a petticoat into strips while Allie tried to clean the gash.

But blood kept dripping out, slowing the process. In one swipe of a rag, Allie felt something hard in the soft, open flesh. At first, she thought it was part of the bone, but then the light caught its shine.

She glanced up to show Jason, but he’d disappeared into the kitchen area.

Allie pulled a bullet from the tissue and tossed it in the pan of water without taking time to examine it. When he woke up, if he woke up, he’d no longer have lead in his leg.

‘‘I’m ready,’’ Jason called triumphantly as he ran toward her. ‘‘I pulled this board off the back wall. I think we have to stretch the leg on it.’’ The board was about four feet long and six inches wide. ‘‘I seen a doc do that once with a friend’s arm. He said he had to hold the bone straight until it grew back.’’

Allie nodded. She knew for the bone to heal straight it must be tied to something. She’d seen a medicine man tie a broken leg to a man’s straight one, claiming they would both grow the same. For a full cycle of the moon, the man crawled around dragging his tied legs behind him. But when the ropes were removed, he stood straight on two legs once more. If that worked, the board might work.

They placed the wood beneath Hardy’s leg and pulled as hard as they could.

‘‘Harder!’’ Allie kept saying as she tried to keep Maxwell still while Jason pulled.

The sheriff moaned in pain, but the leg straightened. Allie and Jason tied it in place, leaving the gash untouched. Blood dripped out on the ties as they worked.

‘‘You think we pulled it too hard?’’ Jason whispered. ‘‘What if this leg is longer when we untie it from the board?’’

‘‘We’ll worry about that later,’’ Allie answered, thinking the boy needed an extra pocket to carry all his worries in.

Allie held the flesh together with her fingers and began to sew the skin closed, but blood kept bubbling in her way.

‘‘Wait!’’ Jason ran to the bottle still next to the sleeping innkeeper. ‘‘I saw a doc do this once in the bar. Every time there is doctoring to be done at the bar, I like to help if I can. Hope I learned something that will help.’’

He began dripping the whiskey over the wound, washing away blood as Allie stitched. The whiskey sizzled on the raw flesh. She could see where to make theX’s to hold the skin together.

When the gash was closed, she wrapped the wound tightly and bound the leg, from hip to foot, to the board. The sheriff moaned. Jason dribbled watered-down whiskey into the sheriff’s mouth.

‘‘Is he going to live?’’ Jason sounded near tears for the first time. His hands shook. ‘‘He was always nice to me, never yelled or nothing. I don’t want to watch him die. I’ve watched enough people die.’’

‘‘I don’t know if he’ll make it.’’ Allie picked up soiled rags. ‘‘I never doctored anyone before, but if he does, he’ll have you to thank.’’

‘‘Me?’’ Jason answered. ‘‘I think we both did a fine job. If he lives, of course.’’

‘‘Of course,’’ Allie liked the feel of the phrase. Words were coming easier to her tongue. ‘‘We’ll watch him closely and rewrap the wound every time it gets soaked in blood.’’

They sat on either side of the table and stared at the sheriff for an hour. Slowly, his breathing grew long, and he slept.

Jason finally could sit still no longer. ‘‘I made a stew while they was drinking, just in case those folks from the stage come in. I made cornbread, too.’’ He ran to fetch her a bowl. ‘‘I can cook pretty near anything. There were some days, back at the hotel, that I was in the kitchen from before dawn until after the bar closed. I was only supposed to clean up, but the cook taught me to do things so he wouldn’t have to hurry.’’

Allie watched him moving about the kitchen. He was proud that he’d helped, and that he could cook. The pride made him taller, she thought.

They ate in the center of the long table with the sheriff lying at one end and Owen resting his head at the other.

‘‘The stew is very good,’’ she complimented. ‘‘Will you teach me?’’

Jason swelled with pride. ‘‘Sure. I’d be glad to. Does that mean I can stay with you and Wes?’’

‘‘If you like,’’ she answered. ‘‘And you can leave when you’re ready. It will be up to you.’’

The door rattled, and both of them froze. It rattled again. Allie reached for her knife; Jason tried to pull the sheriff’s heavy Colt from its holster hanging on the back of a chair.

Wes blew in with the rain as the door swung open. His hat was pulled low and saddlebags hung over one shoulder. ‘‘Found no sign of a stage…’’ he began. His tired gaze scanned the room and came to rest on Allie. ‘‘What happened?’’

She could see the worry in his eyes.

Suddenly, all the panic of the past hour shook her. Dropping the knife on the table in her haste, she ran toward him in one swift movement.

The saddlebag slid to the floor. He swept her up in his arms. He held her tightly against him and moved into the room.

‘‘It’s all right,’’ he whispered, brushing her hair back from her face. If she was alive, nothing could be too wrong in the world.

Allie didn’t say a word, but Jason filled Wes in on all the details.

Jason finished by saying, ‘‘And he’s still alive, so we must have done something right.’’

With Allie leaning against him, Wes examined the old sheriff. ‘‘I’d say you did more than something, son. I’ve seen a hundred field dressings in my day, but I’ve seen none better. It’s a good splint. Who knows, the leg may heal straight.’’

He kissed Allie on the forehead and winked at Jason. ‘‘I’d say Hardy was lucky to have you two around. From the looks of Owen, Hardy would have been in big trouble if you hadn’t been here. He would have bled to death before his friend sobered up.’’

While Wes brought a cot down, Jason dipped him a bowl of stew. By the time Wes carried the sheriff to a comfortable bed by the fire, his meal waited for him: stew, a wide slice of cornbread, and cold buttermilk.

The boy never stopped talking while Wes ate. When he’d finished his second bowl, Wes knew every detail of what had happened.

Allie hurried about the room, first cleaning up the blood, then checking on the sheriff.

When she made her third trip up the stairs with a bucket of rainwater from the porch, Wes asked what she was doing.

Allie looked down at her dress. ‘‘I thought I’d take a bath and wash the blood off me, then my clothes.’’

Her drab brown dress was stained in several spots. The blood seemed to be drying the same shade of brown as her dress.

‘‘Mind if I come on up?’’ Wes asked as casually as he could. ‘‘After a day fighting this storm, I’m ready to call it a night.’’

‘‘No.’’ She turned around and headed up the stairs once more. ‘‘I don’t mind.’’

EIGHTEEN

WES CHECKED ON THE SLEEPING SHERIFF AND TOLDJason to call him if Hardy woke up. Then he slowly moved up the stairs. The thought of seeing Allie in her bath warmed his blood. He’d spent hours in the cold rain telling himself that she meant nothing to him. What he did for her he would have done for any human. She didn’t care for him any more than he did for her.