Читать книгу The Law And Miss Hardisson - Lynna Banning, Lynna Banning - Страница 9

All he could remember was there were cherries on her hat. Bright, shiny, red cherries, nodding over her forehead. Nothing else penetrated the fog of pain and nausea while they’d loaded him into the stagecoach. He slumped into the corner seat and set himself to endure the thirty-mile trip across the eastern Oregon plains to Cedarville, where the driver claimed there was a doctor.

Early that morning he’d been full of beans and vinegar, anxious to get this job over with and head back to Texas, anxious for a meal he didn’t have to cook over a fire he built himself. That ended when someone shot him off his horse and the gelding dragged him a quarter of a mile before he could get his boot out of the stirrup.

“He’s probably broke some ribs and maybe busted his arm in a couple places,” the stage driver had said. Someone sloshed whiskey down his throat and the cherry hat lady sniffed.

There were other passengers, but the one he vaguely remembered was the one who was dressed Eastern and acted mighty prim and proper. The driver suggested she might care to wait for another stage, but she gave him a frosty look and in a tone like flint said, “I am expected in Crazy Creek, and I intend to get there.” After a pause, she added, “Is he more drunk, or more hurt?”

“Oh, Lordy, ma’am. He ain’t a drinkin’ man. But he shore is hurt. Somebody musta bushwacked him, cuz he’s good with a gun, bein’ a Texas Ranger, y’see. He ain’t likely to lose a fair fight. He’s hurt, sure enough.”

“Very well. He is as anxious as I am to get to town. Why delay further?”

The driver grunted.

When the coach started up, his head slid forward against the siding. Then something soft and warm cushioned his cheek and he vaguely remembered a wet, cool cloth against his face and a not-to-be-denied voice saying crisply, “Drink this,” and the burn of straight whiskey from a tilted bottle.

When they pulled into the dusty town, he remembered that she climbed out and started giving orders. “Watch his head. If the doctor is nearby, you men can carry him.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the driver said.

“Wait!” she commanded. “Should he have more whiskey if the pain gets worse?”

“We ain’t got more, ma’am. Only had one bottle.”

She looked up and down the dusty trail that passed for a street, pulled a bill from her reticule and handed it over. “Get whatever you think he might need, and bring me the change.”

They manhandled him out of the coach and he thought dimly that his chest might explode with the pain. But the only thing he could recall clearly were the bright red cherries on her hat.

When he finally regained consciousness, he was on a bed in the corner of the doctor’s office, trussed up in tape and bandages with one helluva headache.