The Lady and the Cowboy (14 page)

Sam
had been running towards Ruth since the first shot, his gun drawn and now he threw his body down over Ruth’s, covering her as he looked for the source of the gunfire. He had a general direction but he couldn’t see the shooter.

“Are you all right,” Sam asked,
although he kept his eyes focused in the distance.

It took her a while to answer so he risked a quick glance down at her. Her face was pale but she was conscious, which was always a good sign.

“I'm fine,” she eventually answered. “Just winded.”

He k
new the feeling; when the air is forced from your lungs by a fall, the shock it causes takes you a few moments before you can breathe properly again.

They stayed like that for perhaps five minutes, waiting for movement or another shot.
When none came Sam risked getting up, although he warned Ruth to stay down.

When no more shots rang out, he held his hand out to help her up. To his surprise, she gave him her left hand, holding her right arm protectively to her chest.

“You’re hurt?”

“I landed on my wrist, that’s all. Just a sprain, I'm sure.”

Sam didn’t have the equipment out here to treat her, so for the time being he let it lie. Angling his body between her and the direction of the shots, they headed over to his horse, who was still tied to a tree branch.

All the ranch horses (and most of the cart horses) were used to gunfire after all, no cowboy wanted a horse that became spooked and threw him if he needed to fire his gun, so although Sam’s mount was a little upset, he wasn’t panicked.
Sam spoke soothingly to him as he freed the reins.

Angel had also been desensitised to gunfire as they used starter pistols to begin
races, meaning that he shouldn’t have reacted like that to a gunshot.

Ruth was looking around for him but wherever he had gone, he wasn’t in sight. She prayed he was back at the stables, waiting for them.

Sam lifted Ruth into the saddle then mounted, so he was sitting behind her. It was a bit of a tight squeeze even in a western saddle but Ruth was a small woman, so they could make it back to the house with no problems. He wrapped both arms around her waist, one hand holding her against him, the other holding the reins on the horn of the saddle.

They walked back to the stables, both looking around for some sign o
f Angel. As they topped the hill closest to the house, they saw Angel in the yard, rearing and kicking when the hands got too close to him and clearly still very upset.

Sam urged his horse to a trot and as they neared the house, Ruth could clearly see blood on Angel’s shoulder, it stood out like a lamp in a coalmine against his white coat.

Sam stopped a safe distance away and let Ruth down, then he circled the horse around to join the ranch hands and watched as Ruth slowly approached Angel. His nostrils were flared in fright but he wasn’t panicking like he had done from the others. Sam could hear Ruth talking in a soft, low voice but he couldn’t make out the words.

Sam slipped gently from the saddle, then handed the horse to Willy to take care of.

“Go get the medical kit,” he told Raoul, never taking his eyes off Ruth, afraid that Angel would rear again and perhaps this time, strike her in the head.

Ruth was at
Angel’s side now; her lips were moving, although he couldn’t hear her words. She began stroking circles on his neck with her good arm. Slowly Sam could actually see Angel calming down. His ears came forward and his nostrils returned to their normal size, although he still reacted to every little sound around them. Ruth switched to rubbing a spot on Angel’s forehead, soothing him enough that his head finally dropped.

Now
that Angel was calm, Ruth took ahold of his bridle and began to lead him towards the stables. The hands moved back, keeping their distance as they passed. Sam watched them closely, looking for signs that Angel was unsound, and he did seem to be favouring his offside front leg, the one with the wound, but not terribly so.

As they passed, Sam could hear that Ruth was actually singing
Angel
Hush Little Baby
, a children’s lullaby, one that his sister Lucy often sung to baby Jake and that he had heard often during his childhood.

He followed them at a safe distance until Ruth had entered and locked the stall door behind them. Raoul returned with the first aid kit and a handful of sugar cubes that he’d stopped by the feed room to collect.

Sam sent the others away and slowly approached the stall. Ruth was still singing the lullaby to Angel.

Angel’s ears went back as Sam approached and Ruth resumed rubbing his forehead. Sam offered Angel his hand and after a moment’s hesitation, Angel stepped forward and sniffed, his ears coming forward again as he snorted approval. Slowly Sam withdrew his hand, took a sugar cube from his pocket and offered it to Angel on a flat palm. After only a momentary hesitation, Angel accepted the cube.

Sam stayed outside as he tried to look at the wound. It didn’t seem to be bleeding too badly and Sam wondered if the heat from the bullet had helped to seal the laceration.

“We need to disinfect the wound,” Sam said softly. Ruth nodded but continued singing to Angel. Sam got a bottle of carbolic acid from the bag and poured some onto a gauze pad, which he handed to Ruth.

Gently, Ruth began to bathe the wound. Angel spooked as the disinfectant stung but Ruth continued singing, behaving as if nothing was wrong. Although it hurt her to do so, she raised her wounded hand and stroked his forehead with that hand, as she continued cleaning his shoulder with her left. Angel didn’t relax until she was finished but he didn’t shy away again either. The gauze pad was pink but not too badly so, and she did what she could to clean some of the blood from his coat with it. Thankfully it didn’t sting on unbroken skin.

When she had cleaned what she could, she peered at the wound again.

“It’s oozing a little but it should scab over soon,” she said in a soft, low voice as she rubbed circles on Angel’s neck again.

Sam nodded and held
out another sugar cube, taking the used gauze pad from her. As Angel ate, Ruth began to unsaddle him, one handed. She put the saddle on the stall door then laid the bridle across it.

“Put the tack away,” Ruth said. “I’ll stay with him a few more minutes, then I think we should leave him and keep everyone out o
f the barn for a while, so he has a chance to relax.”

Sam nodded and did as she said, waiting outside the barn for her. He explained the situation to Ben and asked him to keep the others away from the barn as much as possible for the
rest of the day; only the horses from the second barn were to be exercised as usual.

When Ruth emerged, seeming rather shocked herse
lf now that Angel was settled, he hugged her, rubbing her back and being careful not to jar her injured arm. He wasn’t surprised when she began to cry softly and he held her until the tears stopped.

“Come on, let’
s see to that arm.”

He still had the medical bag and with an arm about her shoulders, he led her into the house
and sat her down at the kitchen table. Mamma poured her some whiskey, for medicinal purposes, which Ruth downed in one go, coughing a little since she wasn’t used to it.

Sam
then gently felt his way down her arm, manipulating the joints; he could see tears in her eyes by the time he was done and her wrist was easily twice its normal size.

“I think the wrist is broken
,” he declared when he was finished.

She wasn’t bleeding badly but she did have
some abrasions and her arm was muddy from where she had landed on it, so he cleaned her hand and wrist with the carbolic acid and gauze, using a gentle touch that belied his gruff, cowboy exterior.

He then used two of
Mamma’s wooden spoons to splint the wrist, one on top, one on the palm side, then he tightly bandaged them in place. Ruth hissed in pain but she handled it well.

“We should get you to Doc Harper’s,” he said when he was finished.

Ruth shook her head. “I’m fine.”

“I’d feel better if you saw him.”

Ruth smiled, touched by his tenderness. “He won’t do anything that you haven’t.”

“She’s right,”
Mamma agreed. “Besides, I sent John into town to fetch the sheriff, so he’ll be out to see you soon.”

Although he doubted that Ruth would get justice for what had been done to her and Angel, he couldn’t deny that the sheriff had to be told, no matter how ineffectual he was.

“We’ll have to scratch the race,” he said with a sigh.

“What?” Ruth hadn’t even considered that.

“With both horse and jockey injured, there’s no way we can enter now.”

“Rubbish. I only hold t
he whip in my right hand anyway and Angel just has a scratch!”

Ruth got up from the table and began to pace the length of the kitchen, like a caged tiger.
Mamma and Cassy both stood back, keeping out of her way, afraid to incur her wrath.

“You mean you want
A
ngel to run while hurt?” Sam sounded confused; this wasn’t the Ruth he knew.

“Of course not but I don’t wan
t whoever did this to win! I won’t give them that satisfaction.”

“Ruth.” Sam got up from the table and placed his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to stop and look at him. “Someone tried to kill either you or Angel and they could try again,” he said, his voice quiet but firm.

“I know!” she cried, bursting into tears again.

Sam pulled her into his embrace and tried to sooth
e her.

“I can’t go back,” she sobbed into his shirt. “I don’t want to. I can’t be that prim and proper lady any more, I can’t sit back because someone doesn’t like what I'm doing. I won’t live my life by other
people’s rules anymore! I don’t care why they want to stop me, I just know I can’t let them!”

“I know, love, I know,” he soothed. “And you won’t have to, we will find a way through this, I promise you, but we can’t make decisions in haste. You m
ean too much to me to risk. So does Angel. Don’t ask me how but that tiny albino with a silly name, somehow got me to care about him.”

Ruth’s laugh sounded more like a sob but it had the desired effect of cheering her slightly. She pulled away and looked up at him.

“So, no rash decisions?” Sam asked her, cupping her cheek and wiping her tears away with his thumb.

Ruth nodded her agreement.

“Good,” Mamma said, shoving another glass of whisky at Ruth. “I don’t have any opiates so you’ll have to make do with this to kill the pain.”

Ruth accepted the drink
but only sipped it this time.

***

Thanks to last night’s rain and the soft ground, Ruth was filthy. Mamma carried two jugs of hot water and her largest basin to Ruth’s room for her, as carrying anything was tricky with only one hand. Both Mamma and Sam wanted to stay and help her but they both had a lot of work to do, and she didn’t want the ranch any more disturbed than it had been already.

With some difficulty, Ruth undressed and was glad that she hadn’t been wearing one of her gowns with laces or hundreds of small pearl buttons. A man’s shirt and breeches was much easier to get out of.

Washing her hair wasn’t exactly easy but it too was muddy and she managed somehow. She dressed in a similar outfit, unable to even contemplate one of her complicated dresses, then lay on her bed as she thought over their predicament.

Mamma
knocked a while later and informed her that the sheriff had arrived, so she went down to see him. Sam was just coming into the house as she came down the stairs.

“How are you?” he asked waiting for her at the bottom.

“I’m fine,” she assured him, giving what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

The sheriff stood as they entered the parlour and offered Sam his hand.

“Sam, good to see you again. Lady Adams is it? I’m Sheriff Hays.” He held his hand to Ruth.

Ruth’s heart sank as she realised that the only person
to whom she had ever called herself ‘Lady’ over here, was Tobias. She held up her splinted right wrist so he understood why she wasn’t shaking his hand.

“Oh, that’s looks nasty,” he said, noticing how swollen her fingers were.
Although he was a middle aged man, his hair was still thick and black, and he wore it slicked back from his forehead. He was a little too thick around the waist to be considered fit and his puffy eyes suggested that he may have a drinking problem but then again, he could just be tired.

“It’s broken,” Sam informed
Hays.

“I’m mighty sorry to hear that. Your man gave me the barest details of what happened, would you like to give me the whole story?”

Sam explained everything that had happened that morning, and Ruth added any details he missed.

“So you didn’t actually see who shot you?” Hays asked, almost hopefully.