Read ChasetheLightning for Free Online

holding him upright while he staggered
toward the bed, where he fell face down onto the mattress.
    He was unconscious again. She stared at him a moment, at the
ugly wet stain slowly spreading across the back of his shirt. Swallowing hard,
she reached down and pulled his shirttail out of his trousers. Lifting it, she
felt her nausea rise. Blood leaked from a neat, round hole in his back. Had he
been shot? She’d heard about realism in movie making, but surely this was
carrying things too far!
    She thought of all the old cowboy movies she had seen, the
Westerns she had read. There was no exit hole in front, which meant the bullet
was still in there somewhere.
    What to do, what to do? She cursed softly. Why had she made
such a ridiculous promise before she saw how badly he was hurt? She blew out a sigh
of exasperation. She couldn’t just let him lay there and bleed all over her
clean sheets! Thank goodness she had taken a first aid class not long ago. At
least she had some idea of what to do, and how to do it.
    Going into the bathroom, she found her first aid kit and a
pair of sharp scissors. Shoving a washcloth into her pocket, she carried the
kit and the scissors into the kitchen. After placing them on the table, she
filled a pan with water and put it on the stove to heat, then went back into
the guest room.
    He was still unconscious. She rolled him onto his side as
gently as possible, unbuckled his gunbelt and hung it over the back of a chair.
In addition to the holster, she noticed there was a very large knife in a
beaded sheath.
    She removed his shirt as carefully as she could and dropped
it on the floor, removed the kerchief from his neck, then pulled off his boots,
which were badly scuffed and worn at the heels. And a very tight fit: she was
panting with exertion when she finally got them off. She peeled off his
stockings, wrinkling her nose at the smell. Dropping his socks on top of his
shirt, she wondered when he had bathed last. She unfastened his belt,
unbuttoned his pants, and tugged them down his long, long legs.
    “What the heck?” she muttered as she dropped his trousers on
the floor. He was wearing what looked like the bottom half of a pair of
old-fashioned long johns. Whoever this guy was, he had really immersed himself
in the part. With a shake of her head, she rolled him onto his stomach again.
    She folded the washcloth into a neat square and pressed it
over the bruised-looking hole in his back, which was still leaking a thin trail
of blood. At least it wasn't pumping strongly, which she thought meant the
bullet had missed any major arteries.
    As she applied pressure to the compress, she studied his
profile. He had high cheekbones, a square jaw roughened by a dark beard, a nose
that had never been broken, a nice mouth with a full lower lip. And dark
skin—uniformly dark from his face to his waist. Either he spent a lot of time
outside without a shirt, or he was just naturally dark. From the strength of
his features, she thought he probably had some Indian blood in his background.
    Going back into the kitchen, she slipped an old apron on
over her clothes, boiled a slender-bladed knife and the scissors while she
rummaged through a drawer for some soft, clean dishrags. She filled a bowl with
hot water and placed it on a tray, along with the dishrags, the sterilized
knife, the scissors, and the first-aid kit, and then, saying a silent prayer
that she wouldn’t faint, she went back into the guest room.
    He hadn’t moved. His breathing was steady, but labored and
shallow. She put the tray on the table beside the bed, stood there a moment
gathering her courage, and then began to wash the area around the wound. The
muscles in his back twitched and he moaned softly, then he was still once
again.
    She wiped the area dry, then picked up the knife. “You can
do this.” She stared at the blade, at the way it shook in her hand. “Sure you
can,” she muttered, “and when you kill him, you can just bury him out in