Linda Conrad – The Gentrys: Abby (страница 2)

Abby propped open his mouth, trying to find any obstructions that might be causing those gurgling sounds. When her hand touched his chin, she nearly pulled it back with a jerk. His skin was so hot, her first thought was that she’d been burned. A fleeting image of smooth fire flashed in her head, but she forced herself to stay focused on keeping him alive.

Not much blood and no other obvious wounds. What had befallen this man?

When she reached to open the top button on his shirt to give him a little more air, Abby took a good look at his beautiful face. Even in his unconscious state she could see the pain written in his expression. But she also saw the dark and noble features she’d remembered all these years, older now but somehow even more compelling. Oh my God. This man really was the boy hero of her dreams.

Trying her best to remain professional, she opened his shirt collar and immediately saw the telltale swelling at his neck. Uh-oh. She had a feeling she knew what had happened.

Quickly, Abby checked his arms but didn’t find what she was looking for. Her gaze quickly took in his long torso and grazed down his legs, halting when she saw that his left thigh was swollen and straining the stitching of his jeans. Exactly what she’d feared. Snakebite.

Removing her knife from its sheath on her belt, she began slicing his pants leg. The material was so tough she had to rip and tear at it. At one point she even had to use her teeth, hands and the knife.

Finally the chore was done, and she frantically searched his skin for the two telltale holes. By now his lower thigh was twice its size, bruised green, purple and yellow. Turning him on his side, she found the wounds on the back of his leg just above his knee. Looked as if a large rattler had done this job.

She eased him all the way over and carefully arranged his head so that his breathing was a little quieter. As she did, the images of broad shoulders and rippled muscles blasted her with memories and tender feelings. But there wasn’t enough time for her to be gentle, let alone pay attention to much else. He might be running out of time.

Abby left him for a few moments to dash back to her rope, still dangling over the side of the ravine. She climbed back up to the top of the ravine and found Billy Bob waiting there for her return.

“What’s going on down there?” he asked as she headed for her canteen and snakebite kit. “You fixin’ to nurse a steer? You’d be better off using your rifle to take him out of his misery, missy.”

“No, it’s not one of the yearlings,” she gasped through the fear that made her voice raspy. “It’s a man. And he’s hurt bad.”

Abby gulped down a near-hysterical sob. She’d never helped anyone this gravely ill before. If he died…

Back at the bottom of the wash, she thanked heaven for the rattlesnake antivenom. Abby did exactly as she’d been trained. First she’d used the Sawyer Pump extractor to draw out as much surface venom as possible. Next she’d injected the antivenom.

The rest would be up to God.

Within a few minutes she could see the swelling begin to subside. He’d started to breath easier and his eyelids fluttered as he seemed to fight for consciousness.

Perhaps he was in shock. She poured canteen water on her red bandanna and wiped his forehead, eventually leaving the wet cloth lightly covering his face to keep the sun off. Abby knew she had to get him to the hospital. He needed professional medical attention.

The cell phones were worthless out here, and they would need to ride for hours to find help. But first he had to be moved out of this harsh sun. How on earth would she manage that?

She screwed up her mouth and looked around at the walls of the wash. Well, there was nothing to do but try the best she could. A man’s life hung on her efforts.

Fortunately, Billy Bob had known what to do. He had rigged up a makeshift stretcher, made from a few sturdy mesquite branches, some rope and a couple of vines that grew alongside the rim of the wash. In the meantime, she’d used the elastic bandage from the first-aid kit to keep pressure on the wound.

After a couple of trips up and down the walls of the ravine, she and Billy Bob used their ropes and horses to pull the stretcher up past the sharp rocks along the sides of the dry wash. She was breathing hard and nearly ready to pass out by the time she’d finished guiding the man’s inert form as he lay tied firmly between the branches. Her long-sleeved denim shirt was soaked through, and the sweat poured from every inch of her body.

Billy Bob handed his trail canteen over to her.

Abby put a few drops of water on the unconscious man’s cracked lips and took a couple of swallows of the metallic-tasting water herself. Then Billy Bob did the same.

Abby finished packing her saddlebags. “We’d better figure a way to get him out of the sun,” she told Billy Bob. “Line shack twenty-three isn’t far away, is it?”

“’Bout a half mile back up the fence line,” Billy Bob answered over his shoulder. He was rigging up the stretcher behind her horse, Patsy, in the old Indian-squaw style.

“Good thing, too,” he said. “Don’t rightly think those branches will hold together for much farther than that.”

Abby agreed wholeheartedly. Their lashing ability left a lot to be desired. But the makeshift rig should remain in one piece just long enough. She hoped.

The line shack turned out to be only a quarter mile away, but it took them much longer than she’d thought to reach it. By the time she dismounted and opened up the shack, the harsh, late-spring sun hung low in the sky, casting long shadows from every tree and rock. The stretcher, which had surprisingly held together until now, began to unravel and would soon be in tatters.

The heat in the little cabin was intense. She quickly threw open the front door and all the windows except the one that had been broken and boarded up. A dry, dusty breeze finally blew through the one room and dropped the temperature, but not nearly enough to make it comfortable.

While Billy Bob struggled to untie the stretcher from Patsy, Abby unpacked the blanket rolls that served as bedding for the cabin’s one cot and one bunk. Then, despite the extreme temperature in the cabin, she started a fire in the cookstove. She wanted to heat some water so she could clean the man’s wounds first thing.

“Well, ain’t that a kick in the britches.” Billy Bob elbowed open the door that had blown shut in the hot breeze. He half carried, half dragged the injured man inside and lowered him onto the cot.

It was the first time that Billy Bob had stopped long enough to get a good look at the man he’d helped save. The sight of an American Indian in this part of Texas was pretty rare these days. Rarer still to see one on Gentry Ranch land. Billy Bob just stood and stared down at him.

The injured man groaned once and opened his eyes, trying to come out of his groggy fog. Abby got only a momentary glance at the deep, black eyes. But that was enough.

For sure, it was her high school heartthrob. She’d all but forgotten.

No, that wasn’t quite right. She’d never forgotten those mesmerizing eyes. Put them out of her mind maybe. Buried the uneasy sensual feelings way down, deep enough not to be consciously remembered. But never totally forgotten.

“That there’s the Injun who lives on the Skaggs Ranch, ain’t it?” Billy Bob scratched his stubbled chin and squinted up his eyes in thought.

Indeed. He most certainly was the “Injun” who was the stepson of the man who owned the ranch next door. Abby searched her subconscious for shreds of memories.

“Yep. His name is Gray Wolf Parker and he’s Skaggs’s stepson. Abby hadn’t seen him since she’d been a high school freshman and he was the new senior. But the rest of her memories had to wait for a moment alone.

“Billy Bob, you know the cell phone won’t work out here, don’t you?” she asked the old man.

Billy Bob looked her way and nodded.

“You think you can watch Gray while I ride back toward the big house?” she asked shortly. “I figure it’s only twenty miles or so to where the cell phone will be in range. I’ll give the helicopter paramedics aerial directions to the line shack when I can reach them.”

Billy Bob frowned at her, shuffled his feet and tried to knock the accumulated dust off his work hat by slapping it against the side of his even dustier chaps-covered thigh. Maybe she shouldn’t have sounded so demanding with her request. After all, her goal was to become his boss soon. She really needed him, as well as the rest of the men, to be on her side and start seeing her as the new foreman.

Billy Bob shook his head. “Look, missy. You already went down that wash when it was too dangerous. I wasn’t there to stop you, but Jake and Cinco would have my hide if I let you go riding off across the ranch alone in the dark of night. Cinco gave me strict orders to keep you safe.” Before she could make any reply, he’d stepped outside the door, and she heard him spitting out the chewing tobacco.

Dang. Several thoughts flashed through her head at once. In the first place, he’d called her missy again. She hated that little-girl term. When would she ever make it to just plain ol’ Abby? Even the old-lady term “ma’am” would sit easier with her.