Hideaway Page 9

  “Somebody does, and it seems someone who would smack a woman in the face wouldn’t mind stooping to shooting some poor animal. Cheyenne? You okay?” A hand touched her arm.

  She opened her eyes to find two angry young faces peering down at her. Racing tentacles of pain exploded through her head. The tow-headed kid leaned closer.

  “Leave her alone!” Gavin shoved him aside. “Get away, just go on.”

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Get out!”

  As Cheyenne scrambled to sit up, Gavin dropped to his knees beside her. “You okay? He really whacked you.”

  “You don’t look so great yourself,” she muttered, trying to focus on the blood that still dripped down the side of his face from a cut past his hairline. “Is there a doctor’s office someplace around here? You might need some sutures.”

  “No doctors here. I’ve got to get back to the ranch.”

  “The police, then. We need to call the police.”

  “Are you kidding? Nobody’ll take my word over Danny Short’s, even if he is a bully. I don’t need a doctor if I can just get back to the ranch.”

  There was a splash behind them, and they looked around in time to see Danny paddling the canoe away from the shore.

  “Is that your boat?” Cheyenne asked.

  “Nope, it’s Dane’s,” Gavin muttered. “No telling where Short will paddle that thing, then he’ll leave it. He’s always doing things like that at school.” He took her arm. “Can you make it to the car?”

  “I can make it, but what about you?” She reached up and pushed a dreadlock aside to locate the source of the blood and saw a gash in his scalp about an inch and a half long. “He must have cut you with something.”

  Gavin pulled away. “I fell against the dock railing when he hit me the first time.”

  “Get in my car. I’ll drive you home.” She led the way back to the car. She opened the trunk, pulled a handful of paper towels from the back seat and folded them into thirds as Gavin slid into the passenger seat. She pressed them against the gash.

  He winced. “Ow!”

  “Sorry. Here, keep pressure—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know the drill. I’ll do it. You sure you can drive? You’ve got swelling around your eye.”

  “I’ll see if I can find some ice.” Now that he’d mentioned it, the pain returned to her face with agonizing precision. As she slid in behind the steering wheel, Cheyenne wondered if her eye would swell shut. It felt like it might.

  Don’t be a wuss. “Which way to the ranch?”

  “You can’t drive there from here, it’d take too long. There’s no connecting bridge for miles.”

  “I’ll call the ranch.”

  “No, drive to Red and Bertie’s place, just down from you. Red can take me across on his boat. Bertie’s got some vet equipment she keeps for the goats.”

  Cheyenne cringed. “Goats? Don’t you have any doctors for humans out here?”

  “Nope. Why’d a doctor want to come and live in Hideaway?”

  She gently pressed her fingers against her swelling eye socket, then put the car into gear.

  She should have stayed in Columbia. It was safer.

  Chapter Eleven

  By the time they passed Cheyenne’s drive, Gavin had his eyes closed, head back, fingers pressing the towels against his scalp. The towels were turning red. The wound Cheyenne had seen must be deeper than she thought.

  When she turned into the Meyers’ drive a couple of minutes later, Bertie emerged from a concrete building barely twenty feet away, wearing a stained overcoat and black rubber boots, a red bandanna on her head. White hair peeped out the front and sides of the scarf.

  She smiled and waved. “Change your mind about the cat?” she asked when Cheyenne got out of the car.

  “No, that isn’t—”

  “Lord a’mighty, what happened to your eye?”

  “I had an accident. You know Gavin Farmer from the ranch?” She gestured toward her passenger.

  The old woman’s dark eyes narrowed as she peered past the glare of sunlight on the windshield. “Blaze! What happened?” She sprang around the front of the car with the energy of one of her healthy young goats and yanked the door open. “You all right?”

  “Don’t get all het up,” Blaze muttered. “I’ve just got to get to the ranch. Think Red’ll give me a lift on his boat?”

  “Not before I see where all that blood’s coming from,” Bertie snapped. “What on earth—”

  “It’s just blood, Bertie.” He made no move to get out. “Cook sent me over to Hideaway to take some eggs to the store, and Danny Short went after me before I could get out of town. Some people think I’m the one who did those things Friday night.”

  “Cook should’ve gone hisself!” Bertie tugged on Blaze’s arm. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

  He slid from the seat and stood up, grabbing the door as he swayed forward. Cheyenne reached for him, but he pulled away. “I’ve got to get to the ranch.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Bertie asked. “Why are you wobbly? You lose that much blood?”

  “Nope, I just hit my head on the dock a little too hard, is all.”

  “Think you might need a doc.”

  “I know what’s wrong, and—”

  “Let’s just hope Red don’t catch wind of this, or he’ll totter to town and bang some heads, yessir he will,” Bertie said. “Come inside.”

  Cheyenne studied the blood that matted Blaze’s hair. There shouldn’t be that much blood—his cuts weren’t that deep. “Blaze, have you been taking a lot of aspirin for some reason?”

  “Nope.”

  “Any other medications that might—”

  “I don’t do drugs.”

  Don’t interfere.

  But she couldn’t let him bleed out. She walked beside him to the concrete porch.

  He stumbled.

  She caught him by the arm.

  He didn’t pull away. “No use me going inside, Bertie. I’ll get blood all over everything. Just give me a lift across the lake.”

  “Sit down,” Cheyenne said.

  “All I need’s—”

  “I said, sit down.”

  He sat.

  Cheyenne returned to the car, pressed the trunk release, pulled her overstuffed medical kit—the size of a small suitcase—from the depths of the trunk and carried it to the porch.

  “What’re you doing with that?” Bertie asked.

  “I’m going to see if I can help this stubborn kid who doesn’t want to tell anyone he’s a hemophiliac.”

  Blaze groaned and buried his face in his hands.

  “We need to stop the bleeding, but I don’t have clotting factor in my kit,” she said dryly. “I trust you have some somewhere.”

  “It’s at the ranch, that’s why I need to get there,” Blaze said. “You’re a doctor?”

  “Not much of one, or I’d have picked up on this sooner. I also would have done a neurological check.” She pulled some gauze pads from the kit. She had packed this thing Saturday, prepared to spend at least two months in the wilderness. Alone.

  What a joke those plans were turning out to be.

  “What kind of doc?” Blaze asked.

  She removed the bloody paper towels from his head and replaced them with gauze. “Bertie, would you please hold this in place? It needs pressure.”

  Bertie held the gauze, while Cheyenne reached into the bottom of her kit for a tiny tube of acrylic glue. She didn’t have suture equipment, but she’d read about a procedure in one of her medical journals that just might help.

  “Hold it directly over the cut,” she instructed Bertie. She withdrew some scissors from her kit and snipped the ends of two snaky braids, one on either side of the wound.

  Blaze pulled away. “What’re you doing?”

  “The best I can do to slow your blood loss.” She untangled the hair, then twisted it over the top of the wound until it drew both edges of the cut together.
>
  “You got any idea what you’re doing up there?” Blaze complained.

  “I’ve never done this before.”

  “What?” He pulled away. “Ow!”

  “Hold still, I’m doing a rough suture repair using what I have, which is your hair.”

  “You’re ruining my do?”

  “Just don’t look in the mirror for a while.”

  “You using a needle?”

  “I said hold still. I’m not using a needle. Bertie, hold this tight.”

  The older lady did as she was told, obviously unaffected by the sight or nearness of blood. Cheyenne coated the hair with glue, then capped the vial, taking care not to glue her own fingers, or Bertie’s, together. She pulled the strands tightly together as she continued to twist.

  “Now just keep it there a moment, Bertie, give it time to dry. If Red can’t take Blaze to the ranch, I’ll—”

  “Why don’t I go call Dane real quick,” Bertie said.

  “No!” Blaze cried.

  “Hold still,” Cheyenne snapped.

  “Don’t you go telling Dane,” Blaze said. “He’s put up with enough from me for now.”

  “He’d have all our hides if we kept this a secret from him,” Bertie said.

  “You won’t be able to keep it a secret, Blaze.” Cheyenne pulled out a roll of cling gauze. “Not when you walk into the house with your head bandaged. Dane Gideon doesn’t seem like he’d—”

  “You’re not bandaging my head,” Blaze protected.

  “Yes I am, because this makeshift suture job may not prevent further blood loss, and you’ve already lost too much.” She indicated his shirt, soaked red, his hair and the paper towels they had discarded.

  “Lady, who are you?” Blaze asked.

  “I’m a doctor, okay?” She unwound the gauze and started wrapping it around her patient’s head. “An emergency physician, so please listen to me.”

  “You work in an ER?” Bertie asked. “Like that television show?”

  “Yes, but right now I’m on leave, and I would appreciate your keeping quiet about it.” Her experience in this area of the country had been that when some people discovered she was a doctor, they took for granted she was rich. Then unscrupulous service people would try to charge her double the going rate for their services.

  Besides, if people discovered she was a doctor on leave, they’d want to know why, and she’d rather not talk about Susan with strangers. Not to mention that as soon as people knew she was an M.D., they’d start coming to her with medical questions and problems, and she didn’t feel like dealing with those.

  She did a quick neurological exam on her patient and was satisfied he’d received no lasting damage. “Please, Blaze, just do as I ask and be careful today. You’ve lost blood, you need to take it easy.”

  “Blaze? You called me Blaze.”

  “Well, I—”

  “Blaze is good, Doc.”

  “Call me Cheyenne, please. I told you I don’t—”

  “Won’t help for Dane to know about this,” Blaze said. “He’ll just think he’s gotta do something about it, and it’ll make everyone madder at me. So you keep quiet about it, and so will I.”

  “Dane wouldn’t make it worse on you,” Bertie said. “He knows how to handle things. Always has. Besides, he’ll take one look at you—”

  “Not if he don’t see me in the light for a while. I’ll wear my knit cap over all this gauze. But I’ve got to get back to the ranch,” Blaze said. “I need my medication.”

  “Won’t work to hide this from him,” Bertie said.

  “I’ll stay out of his way for a day or two. I just want to forget the whole thing. Please, Bert.”

  Bertie straightened. “Good-looking young fellas always could get around me, you know. If Red don’t show up soon, I’ll take you over to the ranch in his boat.”

  Bertie had just gone inside when Red’s bald head poked around the side of the house. A smile creased his whole face when he caught sight of Cheyenne, then Blaze.

  He nodded at Cheyenne. “Hello, young lady. Did you bring this little scalawag over to go fishin’ with me this morning? Crappie are bitin’ good, they say.” He sank down on the steps next to Blaze, squinted at his young friend more closely, then exclaimed, “What’d you do, get run over by another mad cow? Bloodied your face up good.”

  “That’s right, Red,” Blaze said loudly enough for the old man to hear. “You know me, always falling.”

  “Bertie gettin’ you cleaned up?”

  “Yup.”

  “Don’t s’pose you’d want to go fishin’ for a while afterward.” He nudged Blaze playfully with his elbow, eyes twinkling as he turned to Cheyenne. “This here’s my fishing buddy. Only kid I ever knew who could sit still for hours in a boat, waitin’ for the fish to bite.” He turned back to his young friend. “So how about it, want to go?”

  Blaze shrugged. “Yeah, we’re on spring break. I’ll go if you’ll take me to the ranch first. I gotta deliver some beans an’ tell Cook where I am. You got any beans?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Beans! Dried beans! Got any?”

  “Sure, sure. Got two bags, but they’re not cooked.”

  Blaze chuckled.

  “You’ll need fluids,” Cheyenne reminded him. “To replace the blood loss.”

  “Got some orange juice,” Bertie said, poking her head out the door again. “I’ll get you a glass.”

  She came back out with a pan of water, a cloth and a clean shirt of Red’s.

  “I got me a fishin’ partner, Bert,” Red announced as he slapped his knees and stood up. “I’ll go get our gear ready. Blaze, you come on out to the dock when you finish.”

  “I will, Red!”

  Bertie helped Blaze change shirts, then did some quick cleaning on his face.

  “You need your clotting factor,” Cheyenne said. “You can clean up later. Are you sure you feel up to fishing today? I think you should rest.”

  “Fishing’ll fix anything. As long as Red doesn’t tip the boat over again, it’ll be plenty restful out on the lake. I just…got the wind kicked out of me.”

  “And half the stuffin’,” Bertie said. “If the Short kid gets away with this, what’s to stop him from doing it again?” She wiped the last of the blood from Blaze’s face and dropped the stained cloth into the pan of dirty water. “That’s done. You’re still bleeding some, I guess you know.”

  Blaze stood up. “You got those beans?”

  Bertie went in to fetch the beans. Blaze looked at Cheyenne. “Most strangers wouldn’t’ve bothered with me.”

  “How long does a newcomer stay a stranger around here?” she asked.

  “More’n a day. They say about ten years. Could be longer. Dane’s been here that long, and some still say he’s a newcomer.”

  Bertie brought out the beans, handed Blaze a package of sandwiches and fixed him with a stern gaze. “You make Red take the motorboat.”

  “I will, Bert. Guess we’d better look for the canoe while we’re out there. Danny probably set it free to roam wild.” He nodded to Cheyenne. “Thanks. Guess this makes up for last night.”

  Cheyenne chuckled. “You know where I am if you start having any trouble with the cut.”

  He collected his beans and sandwiches and headed around the house.

  “How are the kittens?” Cheyenne called after him.

  He raised an “okay” sign with his hand as he disappeared around a lavender bush.

  “I don’t s’pose you know you got a shiner yourself,” Bertie said. “Better put some ice on it.”

  “I’ll do that.” As soon as she found some ice.

  “Come on in the house a minute,” Bertie said, as if reading Cheyenne’s mind. “Sooner you take care of it, the better it’ll be. ’Course, being a doctor, you already know that.”

  Cheyenne followed the older woman into the house, and found herself stepping forty years back in time. A worn sofa in brown tweed faced two avocado-green rec
liners, well used, by the look of them. Bertie led the way into the kitchen, where an old oak table and chairs took up the center of the room. White metal cabinets gleamed in bright sunlight that poured into the kitchen from a long row of windows to Cheyenne’s left.

  Sitting Cheyenne down at the table, Bertie dug out a clean rag and wrapped it around several cubes of ice.

  “Put this on your eye,” she said, holding out the rag.

  Cheyenne took it, then winced as the wet coldness stung her skin.

  Bertie reached for a cast-iron kettle with steam drifting from the top, then took two mugs from the metal cabinet beside the stove. “How’d you come across Blaze? Just see him getting beat up and leap to his rescue?”

  “Something like that.” Cheyenne pulled the ice pack away from her eye.

  “Leave it right there. It’ll still probably turn color, but maybe not so bad.” Bertie poured pink-brown liquid from the kettle into the mugs, then set one in front of Cheyenne. “Sassafras.”

  Cheyenne frowned at the cup. The latest medical reports said sassafras tea was toxic.

  “Try it. It’ll thin your blood for summer. Here’s some honey for sweetener.” Bertie pushed a jar across the table.

  Cheyenne added the honey and took a sip of the tea. It tasted a little like warm root beer. Not bad.

  “The ranch boys are always having trouble with the town boys,” Bertie said. “It’s no surprise Blaze is catching it now.”

  “Why is that? Because he’s black?”

  “That could have something to do with it, but I think the biggest problem is that Blaze and school don’t mix..”

  “Why not?”

  “He don’t read so well. He just turned sixteen and he still can’t read a line out of a newspaper.” She shook her head. “He’s not dumb, not by no stretch. Dane wants to help him learn, but much as Blaze likes Dane, he won’t try even for him. Says he’s had too much trouble with it. If it weren’t for Dane’s rule that all the boys have to stay in high school in order to stay at the ranch, Blaze would’ve quit already.”

  “Then he’ll be able to thank Dane for that rule someday. Good for Dane.”

  “Yep, Dane’s a winner.” Bertie stared into the swirl of tea in front of her. “A God-fearing man.”

  Cheyenne stopped stirring her tea and scowled. She hated those words.