Along The Fortune Trail (19 page)

T
he morning came, and he had another teaspoon of medicine dispensed by Alice before he ate a small plate of choriso and beans with a tortilla for breakfast. Sun poured through the transom and filled Blaine with optimism about his condition. He sensed some improvement. His leg ached badly, but he generally felt better, and Alice had said she thought his fever had come down some. He rolled a smoke and lit it, then sat waiting for the medicine to kick in.

Doctor O'Malley opened the door as Blaine was finishing his smoke. “Good morning.”

“Good mornin’, Doc.”

“Missus Martinez tells me your fever has come down.” The doctor walked to the side of the bed and put his palm on Blaine's forehead. “Ah … yes, better. Not gone, but better. How are you feeling?”

“A sight better ‘n when they dragged me in here. Seems I been asleep all but about one hour since I got here. That oughta help some.”

“Yes, well let's have a look.” The doctor pulled the sheet off Blaine's leg. The center of the bandage was heavily blood stained.

“Should it be leakin’ that much blood, Doc?”

“I don't think it's something to worry about. I had to cut out some tissue getting at the rest of those bullet pieces. I couldn't close it back up the same way, so you have somewhat of an open wound. It was bound to bleed some. That's one reason you have to stay off this leg—for several weeks, I suspect. You'll never get it healed if you're on it too soon. The real concern for now is the infection.” The doctor started looking closely at the leg and feeling up and down from the spot of the wound.”

“Whadaya looking for, Doc?”

“Red streaking, abnormal swelling and tenderness away from the wound, lines of discoloration.” The doctor pulled out a pair of scissors. “Let's change this bandage right now.” He cut the bandage and carefully removed it.

Blaine stared at the short gash in his leg that was packed with gauze. Suddenly, he felt the surge of wonderland as the painkiller of the small brown bottle hit him. He was grateful of it. His concern melted, and he watched with some glee as Doctor O'Malley extracted the packing and flushed the gapping hole with a clear solution from another brown bottle. “Those brown bottles are right handy,” Blaine said, as if he were on a picnic.

Doctor O'Malley looked up at Blaine, taken with the whimsical tone and obvious departure of sobriety in his patient's last statement. “Well, I don't see any signs that the infection is spreading. So far, so good.”

“Wonnnnderful,” Blaine sang out, just as his eyes shut and the vision of himself swimming naked with eight ladies in a hot springs led him to another drug-induced sleep.

An hour later, Blaine heard the voices in the twilight of consciousness, and his eyes cracked open to slits. The blurry figures before him slowly came into focus. Sammy, Claire, and Margaret stood by his bed staring at him appraisingly, like he was beef for sale. He smiled slowly at the recognition of his friends. “Anybody home?” Sammy asked.

Claire walked up close and placed her hand on his forehead. “He does feel better,” she said in a tone of confirmation.

“Yes he do,” Blaine chimed.

“Hello, Blaine,” Margaret said excitedly. “I'm so glad to see you awake with some color in your face.”

“I'm glad to see you too, Margaret.” Blaine extended his hand to hers and gave it a squeeze.

Sammy smiled. “You do look more like the living now.”

“I been sleepin’ like the dead since you hauled me in here.”

“Claire wants to haul you out of here,” Sammy replied.

Claire spoke up. “There's no sense in you staying here any longer than need be. Tomorrow we'll move you out to my place if the doctor okay's it. I've got the room, and we can look after you proper while you convalesce. Doctor O'Malley says by tomorrow he should have a good idea about the state of your infection. If it hasn't worsened, it will be all right for you to go.”

“That'd be loverly.” Blaine looked happy to hear the plan.

Sammy pulled the buckboard in front of Doctor O'Malley's office at one o'clock the following afternoon. Claire and Margaret both got down before Sammy could get around to help them, the women having decided they were perfectly capable of getting down themselves when a mission lie ahead. Sammy and Dorian carried Blaine and laid him out on the deck of the wagon with his head on two pillows just behind the seat. Then Dorian went inside with the women to give them instructions and materials for cleaning and re-bandaging and to tell them what symptoms to keep an eye out for.

Sammy stayed with Blaine, who took the opportunity to talk to his friend. “Ya know, amigo, I'm gonna take the doctor's advice and stay off this thing. Get healed up.”

Sammy lit the cigarette he'd just rolled, then took a long drag and blew the smoke into a breeze. “I'd say that's sound thinking.”

“There's a larger point,” Blaine said, smoking on his own cigarette.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“There usually is.”

“What I mean is, you don't need to hold up on my account. Doc said a couple of weeks. If I was you, I reckon I'd ride on.”

“I appreciate you sayin’ so, but I'm not goin’ anywhere this minute. We'll see how it plays out. I need to stay awhile and help these gals get set up. You can't help ‘em right now.
There's
the larger point.”

“Yeah, that's a large point.” Blaine took a drag and blew it out and then got a glint in his eye as if something had just occurred to him. “Hey, how come you keep talkin’ about gals, as in two of ‘em? Ain't Margaret goin’ home?”

“Not anytime soon. She asked Claire if she could stay with her. Claire was more than happy about it.”

Blaine smiled. “Well whadaya know. We're gonna be one big happy family out at Claire's for awhile, huh?”

“Looks that way. Hope they can cook.”

“Yeah, but back to my larger point. Anytime you wanna ride on, you just go ahead. I understand and won't take offense.”

“Okay.”

The door opened and Dorian came out with a wooden crutch. The women carried gauze and bandages and a bottle of antiseptic solution. Sammy walked around the wagon to help the women. Dorian walked over to Blaine and laid the crutch down beside him. “I only had one,” he said. Then he handed Blaine a pint bottle of laudanum. “You shouldn't need this too much longer. I don't recommend ever taking more than a teaspoon every six hours. The dosage is written on the label. If you take too much, it can kill you.”

Blaine's eyes widened. “I'll try to avoid that.”

“Just letting you know, lad. It's easy to like, and easy to get carried away. I'd let Missus Studdard dose you, and stay off that leg. I'll be around to Missus Studdard's in a day or two to look in on you.

“Thanks, Doc. Much obliged. How much do I owe you?” Blaine said, reaching into his pocket.

“Mister Winds settled your account. Good luck.”

Claire had an idea that she would set Blaine up on the settee in the den. Sammy was bunking in the loft room and Margaret slept in the bedroom with her for now. The den was directly off the parlor and had a window with a pretty view to the south. She was sure he would like it. And like it he did. But there was a screened porch on the backside of the house that he preferred more. It had a table and chairs and a cot in the corner where Robert had liked to nap on warm summer days. “It's practically outside!” Claire had stated in objection when Blaine had suggested it.

At first he didn't want to tell her the reason he preferred it, being slightly embarrassed. But he didn't want to be disagreeable with her. Not in her own house. Not over where she wanted him to stay. Not without a reason she would understand. So he told her. “No offense, Claire, but I'm not gonna use a bedpan if I don't have to. I got too much modesty to have you looking after me that way. I ain't crippled. That privy is close by. I can get back and forth fine with this crutch.”

“But it'll be cold on the porch at night and early morning,” she said.

“Naaww, why that's just fresh air. It's the middle of April. I gotta good coat and two blankets. And I can come inside anytime, can't I?”

“Of course you can. Well, if that's what you want.”

“Thank you, Claire.”

Claire fixed up his cot with pillows and extra blankets and brought him a couple of Robert's adventure novels. Blaine found it to be quite the setup and sat cushioned with his back up against the wall so that he had a panoramic view of the yard and outbuildings. He spent his days reading and talking to Sammy and Claire and Margaret as they did outside work and chores, getting the place back in shape.

The women did washing and cleaning and tilled and planted the garden. Sammy fixed the chicken coop and garden fence, retrieved Claire's livestock, and packed in food and supplies. Then he spent several days felling dead trees and using Dobe to drag them. He sawed logs and split wood, all while Blaine watched and talked and rooted him on, smoking cigarettes in a laudanum-induced haze.

Blaine was pretty handy on his crutch, using a swing-and-hop motion that kept him from ever bearing weight on his bad leg. He was careful not to use the privy or move anywhere else while the full effects of the laudanum were present. And he didn't do too much moving around because, even with no weight on it, just moving around made his leg throb. So he stayed put most of the time and enjoyed the mild weather and easy breeze of the porch as he begrudgingly endured his sedentary existence. The laudanum killed the pain and certainly made the time go by with periods of extended sleep. When he was awake, it was generally in a sort of trance in which he was unaware of time passing as the hours melted.

He did as the doctor had suggested and had Claire give him the dosage. He knew it had been the right move. With his vanishing sense of time and reality, he was quite sure he would have overdosed himself.

After a week, he made up his mind that he was done with the laudanum. He had begun to feel like a potted plant, content with sun and watering. In a rare moment of lucidity, he understood how far he'd slipped.

Claire brought him some fresh biscuits, eggs, and coffee, along with the teaspoon and the brown bottle. “No more of that,” he said to her as she prepared to pour the dose into the teaspoon. “I feel like I'm livin’ in a cloud. My brain's been pickled enough.”

Claire smiled at him. “I'm glad to hear you've come around to that thinking.”

“There's over half a bottle of that stuff left. If I don't come around to that thinkin’ right quick, I reckon my brain'll end up down a wormhole.”

She sat with him while he ate, and they talked of all that had been done at her house since they returned. The garden was in, the chickens were regular with eggs, the cow was regular with milk, supplies were in, and needed repairs had been done. Sammy had sawed and chopped enough wood to last well into the following winter. “We have plenty of wood now,” Claire said. “We won't need any for heat for the next six months. Just for cooking.”

“Sammy can swing an axe like he come from the cave of the north wind. That's for sure. I'm itchin’ to do some work myself. I reckon I'd pay money to break a sweat workin’. This layin’ here day after day is gettin’ plumb miserable.”

“You'll have no problem findin’ work if you'll pay to do it. I'd bet my horse on that,” Sammy said, walking into the porch and hearing Blaine's last proclamation. He pulled up a chair and sat down.

“I'll let you two talk. I've got work to do,” Claire said, as she stood up and collected Blaine's plate.

“Thank you for breakfast, Claire”

“You're welcome,” she replied, and walked back into the house.

“You chased all the women away. Now you gotta keep me entertained,” Blaine said. He pulled out the makings. “Smoke?”

“Yeah.”

Blaine had two rolled up inside of a minute. Sammy struck the match and held it to Blaine's first, then lit his own. He took a drag and exhaled. “I've done about all that needed doin’ here, for the time being anyway.”

“Yeah, you got it shaped up fine,” Blaine said, sensing what was coming next.

“I'm ridin’ tomorrow. I need to get this little adventure movin.’ I'd like to be back on the T. before they make the drive, and I wanna have some time in Denver.”

“Yep, I know. I'd like ta be goin’ with ya, but this ain't ready yet. Won't be for another week or so, I reckon. And who knows. I might hang on here for awhile. Help out.”

Sammy smiled. “Claire's a good woman. Good lookin’ too.”

“I did notice that.”

“Hard not to.”

“I ain't thinkin’ that way, though. Could be she wants to get shut of me as soon I'm healed. Margaret's here with her now.”

“I don't think that will last. Maybe. But she'll likely wanna see her family. She posted a letter to ‘em. They might just show up here one day.”

“Yeah. They might.” Blaine took a drag and looked out at the yard. “What's your route now.”

“Nothin’ too complicated. Swing east over to Las Vegas and on north to Raton. Then over the pass and up the plains along the front range of the Rockies. There's a stage runs all the way from here to Denver.”

“Whoa! That's a long haul. You're not ridin’ that are ya?”

“Nope. But I heard there's a rail line that runs from Las Vegas up to Raton … and your horse can ride in a stock car. Dobe might like that.”

“You gonna do that?”

“Maybe. I've never ridden a train. That would be somethin’.”

“Yeah, me neither. I'd like to do that.”

“It'd be easier on your leg.”

“Once I'm healed up, the last thing I'm gonna be is easy on this leg. But I sure could make some time ridin’ a train part ways. How long you reckon you'll stay in Denver?”

“A week, maybe two. Reuben told me there's a lot to see there. I'm gonna see it. He told me to stay at the Ducayne Hotel, so that's where I'll be.”

“Well, Sammy, I hope I see ya up there. If not, I wish ya the best of luck. We sure ended up with more ‘n we figured. I don't think I'd be drawing breath now if I'd a happened on that cave with anybody else.”

“Neither one of us would be if you hadn't held up your end. If I see you in Denver, I'll buy you a bottle of whiskey and the biggest steak in town.”