The explanation that preceded the admission negated any justification Benteen had for his avenging anger. The muscles stood out in his neck as he faced the man his son had wronged, bitterly swallowing his rage.
Behind him, Lorna exclaimed in breathless relief, “Benteen, he’s alive!”
A pain shot through his left side when he heard the hopeful words. He clutched at his arm, and glared at the drylander. “Get out,” he ordered hoarsely.
“If your son lives, tell him I vill kill him if he comes near my vife again,” the man vowed in the same emotionless voice as all his previous pronouncements, then turned and walked from the room with the second man following.
As they left through the front door, Nate Moore and two other curious riders came sauntering in. “What did those two want?” he asked before noticing the body on the sofa Benteen and Lorna were crouched beside. “That’s Webb!” He abandoned his lazy pose and rushed to the sofa. The bloodied side of the shirt had been ripped open to expose the bullet-ruptured flesh around the hole wound and the coldly caked blood. “He’s been shot.”
“The bleedin
g’s stopped, but he lost a lot.” Benteen shot a look at Nate, as if just realizing he was there. “Ride for the doctor, and just don’t kill the horse before you get there.”
“Do you want me to round up the boys to be ready to go after the dudes that did it?” Nate looked at his boss expectantly.
“No.” It was a grim reply.
A frown flickered across Nate’s forehead. “You don’t want me to bring the sheriff back, do you?”
“No!” The second denial was more forceful than the first. “Dammit, I said to get the doctor. Now, go!”
The word was rapidly transmitted to every man and woman on the Triple C in the curiously swift way the invisible range telegraph works. Riders were dispatched to every outstation and line camp on the place, spreading the word that it was not only one of their own that had been shot, but the boss’s son. Ruth was at The Homestead within minutes of hearing the news. All the others gathered at the bunkhouse or the cookshack, their attention divided between the big house on the knoll where Webb lay unconscious and the direction from which the doctor would arrive.
Since none of them knew the details of the shooting or the identity of the other parties involved, speculation was rampant. But there wasn’t a one of them—especially among the older men who had trailed north with Benteen, fought renegades, and battled rustlers to carve out this cattle empire—who didn’t believe there would be some sort of retaliatory response against the perpetrators of this deed. Everyone knew that when someone struck out at a Calder, he got hit back twice as hard. So they waited.
When she heard the jingle of the harness and the whispery rush of the runners attached to the wagon, Lilli wanted to run to the door, but she waited inside, sitting with her hands folded in her lap. Her hair was smoothly piled on top of her head, those damning pieces of straw brushed out. She looked composed and ready to make her explanation to Stefan, but it was all on the outside. Inside, she was a seething turmoil of anxiety, guilt, and torn desires. Her concern for Webb almost blocked out everything else.
It was a long, nerve-racking wait Lilli had to endure. The horses had to be unhitched from the wagon and the harnesses removed and stowed away. An eternity passed before she heard the stamp of his feet outside the door. He walked into the shack and began taking off his winter coverings without looking at her once.
“Stefan, I’m sorry about what happened.” She couldn’t tolerate his condemning silence.
He looked at her once with cold eyes, then walked to the stove. A helpless anger quivered through her at this silent refusal to listen to any explanation from her. It made her all the more determined to give one.
“He brought us some meat. A cow had broken its leg and he had to shoot it. Then he brought it here for us. You must have seen the carcass hanging in the shed,” she insisted.
“I threw it out,” he finally responded in a voice that was flat of feeling. “I vant nothing from him. Let the volves feast on it.”
A whole beef. But Lilli said nothing of the waste, aware that Stefan’s action was a pitiful grasp at pride. “When he found out you had gone hunting, he warned me there was a storm coming. That’s why he went out to look for you.”
“He vishes I had died in the snow.” But it sounded as if he were voicing his own wish.
“Stefan,” Lilli murmured brokenly. He didn’t appear to be listening to her. “He wanted me to go away with him, but I told him no. I—”
“Enough!” he thundered, then just as quickly brought that spate of rage under control. His expression was wooden when he finally looked at her again. “Ve vill speak of this no more.”
“Stefan, you have to understand—”
“No more.” It was decisive and cold.
But his words seemed to signal an end to something else—the closeness that had been such a vital part of their relationship. He wasn’t her longtime friend and companion, but a stranger who didn’t want her to heal the hurt she had caused. Lilli wanted to tell him that he could banish the subject but he could never banish the memory from their minds. Somehow she knew it was hopeless. The years had never stretched so wide between them before.
Benteen had a couple of the boys carry Webb upstairs to his old bedroom. The doctor was taken there when he arrived. He was a relatively young man, a year out of medical school back east. Slightly awed by the size of the house, Dr. Simon Bardolph was a little anxious about his own skills, especially while examining his patient under the intimidating presence of Benteen Calder himself. He’d never treated a bullet wound before. It was an exciting first in his western adventure, but he thought it better to keep that information to himself.
“The bullet passed completely through.” He was a little disappointed by that discovery. If he’d had to probe for it, it would have made a dandy souvenir. “Doesn’t appear to have damaged any vital organs, which is very lucky,” he assured the gentleman hovering on the other side of the bed and tried to make professional comments. “It’s a miracle he didn’t bleed to death, though. The cold must have prevented that.” He smiled at the blond-haired woman who helped apply a fresh bandage to the wound. “Barring any infection, it should heal very nicely. Naturally he’ll be quite weak from the loss of blood.”
“When will he regain consciousness?” Benteen Calder made it a demand for information rather than a simple inquiry.
“That’s a nasty bump on his head.” Dr. Simon Bardolph considered his answer carefully. “He could regain consciousness in a few minutes or a few hours, possibly two days.” And maybe never, but he chose not to broach that possibility now. “That’s about all I can do for him. Naturally I’ll come by tomorrow.”