The other man raised an eyebrow. “Longer than three days. You’re getting stronger. I sure didn’t hold out hope for that, not like Catherine did. Let’s check your progress in another couple of days.”
“I’m gonna be gone by then. The gang’s trail is already cold. The longer I’m laid up, the harder they’ll be to find.”
“You listen to me, Lieutenant.” The doctor’s brown eyes turned stern. “You lost a lot of blood. By all rights, you shouldn’t be drawing breath right now. If you get out of that bed before Catherine or I tell you, you could rip open your stitches and bleed like a stuck hog. I can’t put any blood back in you. Understand?”
“Yes.” Jericho didn’t like the doctor’s words, but he appreciated straight talk. He did need to get on his way, but just the little time he’d been awake this afternoon had left him weak and shaky. He probably couldn’t even saddle his horse.
“I want you to give me your word you won’t try to leave.” Dr. Butler unbuttoned the cuff of his white shirt and rolled it back. “And that you’ll follow my orders.”
Jericho wasn’t used to following anyone’s orders, but he did owe Butler and Miz Donnelly something for saving his life. Besides, he wouldn’t be worth spit if he saddled up and rode out of here, then passed out. “You have my word.”
“Good.” The doctor glanced at the woman who stood quietly on the other side of the bed. “Catherine, let’s change the dressing on his leg.”
“I’ll get the bandages.”
As soon as she stepped out of the room, Jericho said in a low voice, “Hey, Doc, just what all was shot off down there?”
The other man grinned. “You still have your private parts.”
“Will they work?”
“I believe you’ll be fine, but there is some tissue damage. I’m also concerned about damage to your nerves. That shouldn’t affect your manhood, but it might be a while before everything is back to working order.”
Just as Jericho exhaled a relieved breath, the Donnelly woman returned with a handful of white strips torn from a sheet. Her face betrayed no emotion, but her eyes had darkened to near purple and her hands trembled. Since his manhood was still intact, Jericho didn’t care to tempt fate by letting this woman near him with a pair of scissors.
“Uh, Doc, since I’m awake now, I’d just as soon the lady not see me in the altogether.”
“She’s a nurse, Lieutenant. She’s been trained to ignore embarrassments.”
“Well, she ain’t never seen my embarrassments and I don’t aim for her to start. No offense, ma’am.”
“None taken. I’ll wait outside.” She left, and he thought she looked relieved.
Just what kind of woman had taken him in? Her voice smiled, but she didn’t. She obviously had nursing skills, but not the drawl of Texas. Where was she from? Jericho wondered if there was a Mr. Donnelly. Children? Was her brother the boy Jericho had seen with the McDougals at the ambush? And if so, was his pretty nurse involved with the gang, too?
As he nodded in response to the doctor’s instruction to stay in bed tomorrow, it wasn’t the boy who had ahold of Jericho’s mind. It was the blue-eyed woman who made him feel as if he mattered.
Catherine didn’t want to think about Jericho Blue’s manhood. She shouldn’t be thinking about it. But even the next day, as she drove the wagon back from Fort Greer, the memory of his blunt question brought heat to her face. She had been the one to insist she could quell his concerns. But she had nearly dropped the soup bowl in his lap.
Thinking about his—him—in that way opened up other thoughts, sharpened her unsettling awareness of the Ranger. Why couldn’t she simply think of him as another patient? Saints knew, she’d tended plenty of those.
Dr. Butler had told her it would take some time for Jericho to regain his strength. As much as Catherine wished for the man in her bed to get better and move on, she had no desire to see him at full strength. Just the taut, ropy muscles in his arms and legs hinted at the power he must possess when in good health. He was a big man. The idea of him regaining his strength reminded her too much of men who used brute force to intimidate.
She liked Jericho Blue much better when he was asleep. He wasn’t handsome, but she found his stern, chiseled face compelling. A sense of purpose and command surrounded him, as if he was a man who knew what he wanted and would stop at nothing to get it. She shuddered to think how he would be if he wanted a woman. No man had ever made her heart race from anticipation one second, intimidation the next. She didn’t understand it.
Around him, she felt skittish and on guard. When he’d woken, those silver eyes had been soft, then gone as sharp as a honed blade when he talked about the gang who had murdered his friend. Catherine didn’t want to be on the receiving end of that dangerous gaze.
She’d finally seen a smile, albeit at her expense. His blunt question and her catching the bowl that had nearly dropped in his lap had somehow amused him. If he ever turned a charming smile on a woman, Catherine suspected that woman might surrender her virtue and thank him for taking it.
Her own four years of nursing experience had brought her into contact with men in various stages of undress, some completely naked. Yet not one of them had ever put flutters in her stomach or made her dread the return of his strength. It had only been in the last year and a half that she had become so wary around men.
She didn’t like thinking about Jericho, but couldn’t seem to help herself. What she needed was to focus her thoughts toward helping him get better and out of her bed.
Softly clucking to Moe, she drove the wagon back from the fort. Catherine had talked to Dr. Butler about one of her patients in New York City who had injured his foot and ankle. The doctor had agreed to her plan of working with the Ranger’s hand, massaging the tissue and muscles in an effort to see if he could improve and eventually bend his wrist again. She hoped the Ranger would be able to fully recover.
The spring day was warm enough to cause a light sheen of moisture across her neck beneath the heavy mass of her hair. Still, she welcomed being outdoors.
She had left her patient in the very capable care of his cousins, Davis Lee and Riley Holt, along with Riley’s wife, Susannah. Riley’s petite wife had told Catherine they had an infant daughter whom they’d left with a friend named Cora. Catherine had thought Jericho and his family might appreciate the privacy to visit freely, and she could use a respite from his probing silver gaze. Just what did he contemplate so hard when his eyes narrowed on her?
Her gelding, Moe, plodded up the gentle swell of ground, his sorrel haunches glistening in the sunshine. They topped a rise that looked out over town. Fort Greer, where she worked with Dr. Butler, was about two miles northwest of Whirlwind and much farther than the distance Catherine had traveled in New York to reach the hospital, but she didn’t mind. The fort was self-contained, and because of that, its residents rarely came into Whirlwind. The town had been a natural outgrowth of people who weren’t with the Army, but wanted to settle on the prairie.
Catherine liked the distance between her house and the fort. She also liked the small, charming town where her parents, emigrating from Ireland, had come to join Catherine’s widowed uncle. He and Catherine’s father
