At that moment, Miranda Hayes thought perhaps her heart would stop beating altogether, and she found it impossible to stifle a gasp. “My God!” she whispered. There on her own bed lay Jake Harkner, apparently unconscious, one of his infamous revolvers lying on his belly. He must have been there the whole time, even when Sheriff McCleave was inside the cabin! How had he ended up here, in her own house? Did he know she lived here? Had he come to kill her but been overcome by his own wound? Was he faking now, waiting for her to get closer?
She stepped inside the room, quickly raising her rifle again when he moaned. She studied him a moment, noticing that his forehead and the skin around his eyes looked sickly pale. Blood stained the cotton blankets beneath him, and his forehead and hair were bathed in sweat as well as more blood from where Luke Putnam had slammed his rifle across Jake’s head. She had worked enough with her father to know this was not a man ready to rise up and shoot her. He looked more like a dying man.
She moved a little closer, her rifle still in her right hand as she reached out with her left hand to cautiously take hold of the revolver resting on his stomach. He made no move to stop her. She turned and laid the gun on a chair, and mustering more courage, she reached across him and pulled the second revolver from its holster. When he still made no move to stop her, she set her rifle in a corner and then took the two revolvers hurriedly into the main room, placing them into a potato basket under a curtained-off counter. If he did come around, she didn’t want him to be able to find his guns right away.
She hurried back to the bedroom, wondering what she should do. If she went to town for help, he could die before she got back, and she was not sure she wanted to be responsible for that. Besides that, it was getting dark, and she couldn’t be traveling to town at night; nor could she let him lie there bleeding and dying while she waited for morning. There was nothing to do for the moment but try to help him.
“Mr. Harkner? Jake Harkner?” she spoke up, leaning closer.
Her only reply was a moan. She breathed deeply for courage and began removing his clothing—first his boots, then his gun belt and his jacket. It was a burdensome project. The man was a good six feet tall and built rock-hard. On top of that, in his present state he was dead weight. With a good deal of physical maneuvering she pulled off his pants and shirt and managed to move his legs up farther onto the bed and straighten out his body. She hurriedly gathered some towels and stuffed them underneath him as best she could, then unbuttoned and pulled open the shirt of his long johns so she could see the wound, a tiny hole just below his left ribs.
She knew from working with her father and from his medical books that most vital organs were on the right side of a person’s body, and she also knew that the small caliber of her pistol could mean no terribly dangerous damage had been done. The biggest problem was that the man had bled considerably, which was probably the reason he had passed out; or she supposed it could be from the vicious blow he had taken to the head. He could have a fractured skull.
She felt underneath him, pressing her hand at his back at the inside of his long johns, trying to see if perhaps the bullet had passed through him, but she already knew that for the size gun she had used, that was unlikely. She felt no wound at his back, and the sick feeling returned to her stomach. The bullet was still inside him and should come out, and there was no one but her to do it.
She knew that the first thing she had to do was to get him to drink some water to replace the body fluids he had lost from blood and perspiration. She worked quickly then, going to get a ladleful of water from the drinking bucket in the main room and bringing it back into the bedroom. She raised Jake’s head and tried speaking to him again, asking him to drink the water. All she got was another groan. She managed to pour some of the water into his mouth, and she watched him swallow. More ran out of his mouth and down to the pillow. From the looks of her bed and the man in it, she knew both needed considerable cleaning up; but for the moment her biggest concern was getting out the bullet.
She went into the main room to get her father’s doctor bag. “Why are you doing this, Miranda?” she muttered to herself. “Just let him die.” Wouldn’t society be better off? That was what Sheriff McCleave had said. Still, her Christian upbringing had taught her that every man had value, and she reasoned there had to be a reason why this man had led the life he led. Why had he shot his father, if indeed that was true? What was the whole story? How old had he been? She could not forget the strange sadness in his voice when he had told the clerk this morning that it took more than a war to make a man lead a lawless life. Had it been only this morning? It seemed like such a long, long time ago.