He couldn’t possibly put the man into the cramped little compartment in the back, so he propped him up beside him and drove as carefully as he could.
He took the road north toward Colorado Springs. He couldn’t return with the man to Chandler, or there’d be too many innocent questions about who he was and where he’d been hurt. Lee didn’t want to risk being found out. He’d never be able to help anyone again if there were any suspicions attached to him.
On the outskirts of town lived a friend of his, a doctor who wasn’t inclined to ask too many questions. Lee put the wounded man on the doctor’s surgery table and mumbled something about finding the man on the trail. The old doctor looked at Lee and said, “I thought you got married yesterday. You were out lookin’ for half-dead men on your weddin’ night?”
Before Lee could answer, the old man said, “Don’t tell me nothin’ I don’t want to know. Now, let’s have a look at him.”
Now, returning to Chandler, it was two o’clock in the afternoon. Lee was past being tired. All he wanted to do was eat, sleep, and see Blair. He’d spent most of the past several hours planning a story to tell her about where he’d been. He thought he’d tell her that he’d been called to a shootout between members of a gang of bank robbers and that he hadn’t wanted to risk her coming along and getting hurt. It had a ring of truth, and he thought he could get away with it. He just prayed that she wouldn’t ask him why he had to go when there were other doctors in Chandler who could have gone. Also, there would be no account of the shooting incident in the paper.
If worse came to worst, he planned to act hurt that she didn’t trust him and that she seemed to want to start their marriage off on the wrong foot.
At home, he was almost relieved when Blair wasn’t there. He was too tired to do his best in the telling of a major lie. He stuck some ham between two thick slices of bread and went up to the bedroom. The room was a mess, with Blair’s clothes tossed on the bed, the bed unmade. He glanced at the closet, saw right away that her medical uniform was gone and knew that she’d gone to the hospital. He’d have to do some talking, for the men of the board to continue to allow her to work there. Last time, he’d had to promise to take on nearly every shift before they’d let him bring her into the operating room. He’d nearly worked himself into a stupor, but it had been worth it. He’d won Blair in the end.
He ate half the sandwich, crawled onto the bed, hugged Blair’s discarded satin nightgown to him and went to sleep.
When he woke, it was eight o’clock, and he knew right away that the house was empty—and instantly, he began to worry. Where was Blair? She should have been home from the hospital by now. As Leander rose, starting to eat the other half of the now-stale sandwich that was lying beside him on the bed, he saw that her medical bag was on the floor of the closet.
For just a moment, his heart stopped beating. She’d never, never leave the house without taking that bag. It was a wonder that she hadn’t carried it down the aisle with her when she’d married him.
But now, it was there on the floor.
He threw the sandwich down and went tearing through the house shouting her name. Maybe she’d come back while he was asleep, and the house just seemed empty. It took only minutes to find that she was nowhere, inside or out.
He went to the telephone and told the operator to give him the hospital. No one there had seen Blair since the wedding. After enduring some rude jests, saying that Blair’d already realized her mistake and run away from him, Lee put the phone down.
It rang almost instantly.
“Leander,” it was the day operator, Caroline, “Mary Catherine said that Blair called your father right after you left last night to go treat your poor Mr. Smith. Maybe he knows where she is.”
Lee bit his tongue to keep from telling Caroline to stop eavesdropping, but maybe this time he had reason to be grateful to her. “Thanks,” he murmured and went out to saddle his stallion and get to his father’s house in record time.
“You told her what?.!” Leander yelled at his father.
Reed seemed to shrink under his son’s anger. “I had to come up with a story fast. And the only thing I could think of, that was guaranteed to keep her from following you, was a story of another woman. From what I’ve heard of your recent escapades together, I thought fire, war, or union riots just might make her tear into the thick of things.”
“You could have come up with another story—any other story but that my one true love was here and that I married Blair because I’d lost my real love.”
“All right, if you’re so smart, you tell me where you were supposed to be that would keep her from following you.”
Lee opened his mouth, but closed it again. If Reed had told her of a disaster, no doubt Blair would have come to help. He knew bullets flying toward her didn’t stop her. “Now what do I do? Tell her my father is a liar, that there is no other woman?”
“Then where were you on your wedding night? Other than climbing up and down the side of a mountain and hauling a wounded unionist to safety? What will your little wife do next time you’re called away?”
Lee groaned. “Probably something really stupid like hiding in the back of my buggy and joining in the fracas. What am I going to do?”
“Maybe we should find her first,” Reed said. “We’ll start looking as discreetly as possible. We don’t want the town to realize that she’s walked out, or there’ll be questions.”
“She hasn’t walked out,” Lee spat. “She’s…” But he didn’t know where she was.
Chapter 20
Leander and his father looked for Blair all night. Lee had an idea that she might walk when she was upset, and so they combed the streets. But she was nowhere to be found.
By morning, they’d decided to pass the story around that she’d gone to a medical emergency without telling anyone where she was going and that Lee was worried about her. At least, this story allowed them to ask questions about her in the open.
There was some teasing about Lee losing his wife on the first day of their marriage, but he managed to weather it well. His one and only co
ncern was for Blair and where she was. She was so headstrong, and they had so little to base their marriage on, that he was afraid that she’d returned to her uncle in Pennsylvania and that he’d never get her to return. He’d gone through hell trying to get her to marry him, and he certainly didn’t want to have to go through anything like that again in order to persuade her to live with him.