The Preacher's Bride Claim

Mr. Gilbert swallowed with difficulty, but his wide eyes were trusting as he gazed up at her. “Thank ya, Miss H-Hawthorne...I don’t wanna die. Please don’t let me bleed t’ death.”

“I won’t,” she assured him, hoping and praying it would prove to be the truth. Lack of hope could kill a man as quickly as blood loss.

Quickly and efficiently, she slit the trouser leg up the seam and pushed it back from the wound. “Reverend, if you would apply pressure once more?” Then, trying to remember everything about the safe use of tourniquets—taught to her by a surgeon at Bellevue, who’d once treated soldiers in the Civil War—Alice drew one end of the belt under his upper leg, fastened the buckle, then began to twist the belt until she could twist it no more. Finally she stuck the spoon handle into the small remaining loop. Her eyes sought Gideon, who’d remained nearby. “Please hold this loop twisted tight as I have it,” she instructed him. “Don’t let it go unless I tell you.”

He did so, keeping pale gray eyes trained on her.

“Now you can remove your hands,” she told Elijah, and he eased away from the victim with a sigh of relief.

“Can you hold that lantern directly over his leg, please, so I can see what we’re dealing with?” she asked another man who’d come into the circle, a man who looked so much like Elijah he had to be another of his brothers. Once the lantern light flickered over the temporary bandage, she gingerly lifted a corner of it and inspected the gash.

Thanks to the tourniquet, the blood flow had stopped, so she could see the wound on the inside of the left lower leg was about four inches long and at least an inch deep. It must have crossed a big blood vessel to have bled so much—not an artery, she thought, for the bleeding hadn’t been spurting when pressure was loosened, just a steady, continuing crimson stream.

“I’m going to have to stitch up the wound,” she told Gilbert and his wife. “It’s going to hurt some.”

He regarded her with eyes that were now calm. “You do whatever you have t’ do, Miss Hawthorne. I’m in the Lord’s hands as well as yours. Say, weren’t you the newcomer at chapel this mornin’?”

She pretended not to hear the question but directed those with lanterns to come closer and hold the lanterns as steady as they could. Then, after cleaning the wound with carbolic, she started stitching.

Conversation died down as the men watched her work until all Alice could hear was the steady inhale and exhale of her own breathing, and the pounding pulse in her ears.

* * *

An hour later, Elijah watched Alice straighten after putting what was left of her supplies in an oilskin bag. Mr. Gilbert slept inside his wagon, having been lifted there by some of the men. His wife, who’d been profuse with her gratitude, sat beside him. His color was better, and a clean white bandage was wrapped around his newly sutured leg. Those who had been standing around watching the drama began to disperse to their own campsites.

“Thank you, Miss Hawthorne,” Elijah said. “I am in awe of your ability.” The words were so inadequate. Without a murmur of disgust or shrinking from such an awful sight as the ax wound had been, this woman had saved a man’s life.

“Don’t thank me yet,” she said, her voice weary as she pushed back an errant curl that had strayed onto her perspiration-dampened forehead. “He could still develop septicemia—blood poisoning. What I wouldn’t have given for a handful of catgut ligatures, instead of boiled darning thread,” she said. “I’m glad now that I brought a jar of carbolic acid on my journey. There’s nothing better to cleanse a wound.”

“I thought we might have need of your skills but not so soon as it happened,” Elijah commented.

“Once a nurse, always a nurse,” she responded wryly.

“You met my brother Gideon, of course, but this is my other brother, Clint,” Elijah said, when both men joined them.

“It’s an honor to meet you, ma’am,” the man who’d held the lantern said, and beside him, the big man who’d summoned Alice rumbled an agreement.

Elijah saw Alice staring dazedly at the wagon and around the campsite, as if she’d forgotten where she was.

“Come on, it’s late,” he said gently, wondering if she was a bit in shock herself, now that the emergency had passed. “We’ll walk you back to your campsite.”

“No, I must stay. Mr. Gilbert has to be watched,” Alice protested. “His wife can’t do it—you saw that she was exhausted. If he moves around in his sleep too much, the wound could reopen and bleed again. Or he could develop fever—”

Elijah hadn’t thought about the need to watch Mr. Gilbert through the night, but it was plain Miss Hawthorne was dead on her feet and couldn’t do it. Her cheeks were pale, and her eyes showed the strain of the past hour or so.

“I’ll stay,” Elijah said, “and my brothers will walk you home. I’ve sat up with the sick before,” he added, when she opened her mouth with the obvious intent of objecting. “I’ll come fetch you if he worsens during the night, I promise.”

She stared at him, then her shoulders sagged in surrender and fatigue. “Now it’s my turn to thank you, Reverend Thornton,” she said. “I’ll check on him in the morning. I’ll have to keep an eye on him for several days and take the stitches out.”

“Please, call me Elijah,” he said, surprising himself. It just didn’t seem right to stand on formality after such an event. He could see how fatigued she was by the dark shadows blooming under her eyes. “Get some rest, Miss Hawthorne. Gideon, Clint, please walk Miss Hawthorne back to her tent.”

Gideon had told him that Miss Hawthorne’s tent was five campsites to the left of theirs. Now Elijah knew where to find Alice, but he prayed he would not have to seek her out because of a medical crisis any time soon.

Chapter Four

“Good night, Miss Hawthorne. Thanks again for what you did,” Clint Thornton said, tipping his hat to her.

“Good night, gentlemen.” Alice watched Gideon and Clint Thornton walk away from her tent. Elijah Thornton was a good man, she thought. Apparently he was a true shepherd to his flock. His brothers seemed like good men, too, both the taciturn Gideon and the more talkative Clint, though very different from their preacher brother.

Alice stretched, feeling the muscles in her lower back and legs protest the long time she had knelt to suture the wound. She was more exhausted than she’d ever been, even after a double shift at the hospital or a difficult calving on the farm. The coppery, acrid stench of blood lingered in her nostrils.

Please, Lord, let Mr. Gilbert heal without infection, she prayed as she lay down on her cot a few minutes later. She’d have to go check on her patient first thing in the morning and hoped she could remember how to get back to the Gilberts’ campsite. She’d been so intent on not losing sight of Gideon running ahead of her that she hadn’t paid much attention to where they were heading.

She’d have to check and redress the wound every day, and make sure the patient and his wife knew the importance of keeping the wound clean and dry. Even sterilized silk suture was an irritant to the skin, compared to absorbable catgut, and she’d had to use coarse cotton darning thread. She’d go to the Gilberts’ at sunrise, she decided, so that Elijah Thornton could return to his tent and prepare for his chapel service. Poor man, after sitting up with his deacon all night, he’d be even wearier than she expected to be come morning.

She’d offer to make some broth for Mr. Gilbert from the beef bone she’d been intending to make stew with tomorrow. With the blood loss, the man would be weak and perhaps feverish. Better take some dried willow bark to make into tea, she thought, in case the man’s wife didn’t have any. With the list of chores running through her head, she feared she wouldn’t sleep.

But the heat and sunlight stirred her, apparently hours later. When she awakened, one glance at the watch she’d unpinned from her bodice and left lying on an upended crate by her bed told her that she’d overslept straight through to midmorning. She dressed quickly, then picked up her valise full of dressing supplies and medicaments, and headed in the direction she thought the Gilberts’ tent lay.

Elijah would be conducting his prayer meeting at this hour, she thought, regretting that she had missed him, then assured herself it only mattered because she’d wanted to hear from him how his deacon had passed the night.

She managed to find her way to the tent with only one wrong turn. She found Mrs. Gilbert stirring a pot over the campfire, and Mr. Gilbert reclining in the shade of the wagon, propped up on pillows.

He was pale, but without the flush of fever Alice had been dreading. Nevertheless, as soon as she had greeted them both, she knelt at his side and felt her patient’s forehead. She was pleased to find it no warmer than her hand.

“He had some fever during the night,” Mrs. Gilbert volunteered, “but I brewed him some willow bark tea. I’m simmering some broth in this pot here, ’cause his appetite’s still a little puny after all the blood he lost last night.”

“Excellent,” Alice said approvingly, silently commending the woman for her common sense.

There were only a few spots of dried blood on Mr. Gilbert’s dressing, she noted, unwrapping it from his leg. She found the wound as she had hoped—a little pink around the edges, as was to be expected, but with no fresh bleeding and without the angry red appearance and purulent drainage she had feared. Thank You, Lord, she breathed.

After first anointing the wound with some salve from her bag, she applied a new dressing and a fresh bandage. “I’ll be back to check on him this evening, Mrs. Gilbert. Keep an eye on his temperature, would you? Meanwhile, if you have need of me, I should be at my campsite most of the time—five tents to the east of the Thorntons’. If I’m not, please just leave me a note, and I’ll come as soon as I find it.”

“Not so fast, Miss Alice. Let me dish you up some breakfast,” Mrs. Gilbert offered, pointing to a covered skillet.

Alice began to demur, not wanting to consume what might be the couple’s limited resources, but the woman waved away her polite refusal. “Nonsense, it’s the least we can do after what you did last night, and I’m guessing you hurried right here soon as you woke up, didn’t you, poor lamb? You still look tuckered yourself, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so.”

The woman’s efficient kindness was a balm. Alice surrendered, and was given a plate heaped with scrambled eggs, bacon and biscuits. Afterward she felt as if she could take on the world or at least whatever challenges Boomer Town had to offer today. With a last admonition to her patient just to rest today and a promise from Mrs. Gilbert that she’d make sure he did so, Alice took her leave.

It might be a good day to look at saddle horses, she thought. There was a corral full of them at the end of one of the rows of tents that passed for streets in Boomer Town, watched over by a wiry man with the shifty, knowing eyes of a born horse trader. She’d strolled past the corral before, spotting a tall, handsome bay that looked as if he could run. But then there was that chestnut mare with the sweetest face...

Alice had taken the train as close as she could to the territory, then purchased a tent and camping supplies, a wagon and two stout horses to pull it the rest of the way to the border of the Unassigned Lands. She’d chosen Boomer Town—one of the many tent cities along the boundaries—more or less at random. The wagon horses were kept with others of their kind in a common corral, and she had paid a fee for their upkeep.

She’d initially planned to make the run in the wagon, but she hadn’t expected there would be such hordes of would-be homesteaders waiting with her. More arrived every day. Now Alice thought the heavily laden wagon would hold her back, and only a fast horse would ensure her a good claim.

Alice figured it was probably best to buy her horse sooner rather than later to be sure of getting a good one. That would mean paying for its feed between now and the big day, but she’d have the advantage of getting to know her mount’s temperament and ways in the meantime.

But if she wasn’t driving her wagon into the Unassigned Lands, she’d have to leave it here in Boomer Town until after she had staked her claim. Already enterprising gents were offering to secure such wagons, stock and belongings for a fee until successful homesteaders could return for them, but could they be trusted? Alice reasoned it would be better to make friends with other settlers who were leaving their possessions in Boomer Town with family members and barter with them to watch over hers, too.