The Tracker Read Online Free PDF Page B

refocused. “I’ve seen bullets dug out, wounds stitched, and I’ve mixed the salves.”
    “You ever doctored anyone alone?”
    “Only once.” She’d delivered Jade’s baby.
    “Should I ask?”
    “No.” Hugging him close, she guided him into the house and toward her room. He’d never make it upstairs.
    His face was as pale as her petticoats, but he didn’t complain as he limped inside. Gingerly she lowered him onto her mattress. The springs groaned as the mattress sagged. The baby’s cries had quieted. Ellie glanced into the crib. Rose had stopped crying and her face had turned in Ellie’s direction.
    Ellie helped the marshal shrug off his coat and then tossed it onto the floor. A deep stain of blood spread from his right thigh up to his hip and down to his knee. “Mister, you should have stopped when I said to.”
    Pain deepened the sun-etched lines at the corner of his eyes. “Looks like I underestimated you,” he said quietly.
    “You’re not the first.” The man’s breathing was getting shallower. She prayed he wouldn’t die.
    He glanced at the wound. “This is a complication I never considered.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    As gently as she could manage, she lifted his feet onto the bed. When he stretched out, his large frame barely fit the mattress. Ellie pulled off his boots and set them on the floor beside the bed.
    She reached for the buckle of his gun belt.
    He grabbed her hand. “No.”
    “It’ll be hard enough cleaning the wound as it is. I’ll never get to it if I got to work around a holster.”
    He swallowed and pulled his gun from the holster. “Take the belt.”
    He glanced at the crib at the foot of her bed and looked at the sleeping baby. He frowned, as if the sight of the child troubled him.
    Immediately, Ellie pushed the cradle away from her bed toward the corner and away from his gaze.
    “I would never hurt her,” the marshal said, his voice oddly gruff.
    She could feel his gaze on her as she positioned the cradle. “I don’t take chances with Rose.”
    She hurried to the kitchen and retrieved the medical kit Annie kept over the stove and the kettle she’d only just heated for tea.
    She poured hot water into the washbasin, mixed it with some cool well water and then washed her hands. Her hands cleaned and dried, she carried Annie’s stash of bandages and the rest of the hot water to the bed.
    The marshal laid his head back on the pillow, his face tight with pain. His body was all muscle, long and lean, sinewy but not bulky. An injured predator was twice as dangerous.
    “You got a name?” she said.
    “Nick Baron.”
    “Well, Marshal Baron, I’ll make this as painless as I can for you.”
    He nodded.
    She pulled a half-full bottle of whiskey from the medicine box. “I don’t have any herbs to help you sleep, but if you drink the whiskey, it will help a little with the pain.”
    The marshal shook his head. “No booze.”
    “This is no time to be tough. It will help you relax.”
    “No.”
    “It’s not going to be easy.” She dreaded what was to come.
    “No whiskey.”
    Frustrated, she set the bottle on the table. “Suit yourself. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
    She removed a very sharp knife from the box, submerged it in the basin of hot water and then doused the blade with whiskey. Carefully she dried the knife, aware the marshal’s gaze tracked her every move.
    She leaned toward him, the blade gleaming in the sunlight from the one window at the head of her bed.
    Likely by reflex, he grabbed her wrist. “What are you planning?”
    The man was tough but the hint of worry in his voice was unmistakable. “I’ve got to cut the pants off.”
    His iron grip eased and he released her. However, his body remained tense, as if ready to spring. Slowly she lowered the blade to cut off his pants. His flat belly flinched as the cold steel touched his skin. She sliced the fabric, moving down the pant leg all the way to the ankle. The pant leg fell open like a