The man was ragged and dirty, his ankle caught grotesquely in a trap of some kind, blood oozing out around the steel teeth that were biting into his flesh.
His face was a hideous nightmare. This was Crazy Jack, the hermit. It was a death mask this poor creature wore instead of a face. Red ugly scars adorned the sides of his head where his ears should have been. Two open holes that gaped eerily served as his nose.
Lauren swallowed the bile that flooded into her mouth. “Mr. Turner, let me help you.” She crept closer to him.
What was left of his face was contorted in pain. His lips were pulled back in agony over a scarcity of teeth, and his eyes were squeezed shut. Lauren noted that the fingers which had held the rifle were now clenched around the injured leg. The firearm had been abandoned on the ground.
“Don’t want no help,” he hissed.
“You may not want it, but I think you should have some.” The firmness in her voice surprised him. He opened his eyes and looked at her suspiciously, searching for some threat. He saw none.
“Can you get this goddam contraption off my leg?”
“I… I don’t know.” She looked at the ominous thing and shuddered. “I can try.”
“Well, quit jawin’ then and do it afore I bleed to death,” he grumbled. “Take aholt on either side and pull as hard as you can.”
“Won’t it hurt when I lift up your foot?” she asked timorously.
“Yes, goddammit, but it’s hurtin’ like hell now, and I got to git it off, ain’t I?”
“Very well,” said Lauren decisively, removing her gloves. Obviously the man was determined to be rude.
Her heart was thudding as she knelt down beside the disfigured hermit and gently closed her fingers around his shin above where the trap had sprung on his ankle. He gasped even at this slight pressure and she looked at him with pity. “I’m sorry, I know it’s excruciating.”
“Go on and git it over with,” he rasped.
She placed her fingers on either side of the trap, finding as good a hold as she could on the blood-slick metal. Tentatively she tried to pull the tra
p apart. It didn’t budge and Crazy Jack’s breath sucked into the vacuum of his mouth as the pain increased. “Harder, lady.”
Lauren tried again, exerting tremendous pressure. Just as she was about to give up, she felt the metal beneath her fingers give way a fraction. The muscles of her arms ached with the effort she was demanding of them. Finally the sides of the trap sprang apart, tearing into the poor victim’s flesh before coming free of it.
Jack screamed. The trap’s teeth had left deep puncture wounds around his ankle. They were bleeding profusely. Lauren went to her saddlebags and retrieved a canteen of water. She knelt down again beside him and poured the liquid onto the wounds. Jack actually laughed at her.
“Water won’t do no good, Missy. Get that canteen off my horse. He’s around here somewheres.” She looked around until she saw a mangy animal nibbling on the short grass under the trees. She approached him timidly, afraid that he might be as shy of people as his owner, but he stood docilely as she lifted the canteen from where it hung around the saddle horn. She uncapped it and the unmistakable odor of whiskey assailed her nostrils. This must be the rotgut that Jared had told her the old recluse distilled.
She paused only an instant before generously bathing the punctures with the liquor. Jack winced and his eyes began to water, but he didn’t scream again. He gestured for her to take the scarf from his neck and wrap it around his leg. It was grimy and dark with grease.
“Why… why don’t I use mine? It’s…” she suppressed the word cleaner and substituted, “larger.”
“Ain’t takin’ no charity—”
“No, no, nothing like that.” She didn’t give him time to protest further as she whipped her bandana from around her neck. She formed a silent, selfish prayer of thanksgiving that she wasn’t wearing the blue silk one Jared had given her, but one of cotton print she had bought for herself in Coronado. Not allowing herself to think of the pain she must be causing the poor man, she hastily tied the scarf around his oozing wounds.
“There. That should hold you until we can get you back to Keypoint and summon the doctor. Can you ride?”
“Hold on just a goddam minute, Missy. I ain’t agoin’ nowhere but to my house, and no stinkin’ sawbones is goin’ to touch any part of Jack Turner.”
“But, Mr. Turner, those wounds are serious. Your ankle may be broken.” She couldn’t let him return to that cave he lived in without medical attention. “Please, if you don’t want to go to Keypoint, let me get Rudy, you know Rudy Men—”
“Hell, yes, I know who Rudy Mendez is, and he or no one else is goin’ to take care of this ankle ’ceptin’ me. I’ve had more broken bones than you’ve had years.”
“But you may need to be sutured.”
He raised his scornful eyes to her then and cursed imaginatively. “Who you think sewed up my face when them Injuns did this to it, huh?” He didn’t expect an answer and Lauren was too mortified to make one. “Now get outa’ my way.”
Jack struggled to his feet and shrugged off her attempts to help him. He leaned down and picked up his trap, condemning it for being empty. He damned as well his own clumsiness at having stepped on it. He limped to his horse and took a long pull on the canteen before he hoisted himself into the saddle.