Free Novel 1971 - Tucker (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Page B

working against time. That I was in bad shape, nobody needed to tell me, and it was time I bathed the wound in my hip and discovered what else had happened to me.
    Weak as I was, I had no idea whether I’d get through the day or not. Taking off my slicker, I unslung my gunbelt, blinking my eyes in dull amazement at what I saw.
    The bullet had evidently hit my belt, exploding at least two cartridges and leaving that part of my belt mostly blown away. The explosion had torn that hole in my side. Suddenly scared, I peeled down my pants and lifted my shirttail free.
    The folded flannel had stopped the blood, but where it didn’t cover the wound I could see the shine of a fragment of metal from the exploded shell. If that stuff was all through the wound I was in mighty serious trouble.
    I hunted around for coffee, but didn’t find any. There was some tea, and I put some in a pot and poured boiling water over it.
    Then with a white cloth I found in the room I began to soak the edges of the wound and to sponge it off carefully. Twice the cloth caught on bits of metal, and each time I got them out with care. The wound had begun to fester a little, so they came free easy.
    Finally I could lift the flannel pad out, and with hot water I cleaned out the wound. It was tough working on it, for I had to twist around to get at it. I found several pieces of cartridge casing and hoped I was getting them all. A couple of times I stopped to gulp down hot tea. The room was warm and I felt dizzy, but I knew I had to get done what I’d started.
    A time or two I got up and hobbled around, trying to find something to use on the wound. There was half a bottle of whiskey, but I hesitated to use that, although I had taken a stiff jolt of it myself. It seemed a shameful waste of good whiskey to flush out the wound with it, but that was what had been done many’s the time on the Plains, I knew. I was fixing to use it when I found some turpentine.
    Mixing some of that with hot water, I bathed the wound out, and if I was sweating before I surely was then. I made another pad from some of the clean white cloth I’d found and put it into the wound and tied it there.
    I gulped down more tea, and then, putting my rifle alongside the bed and my pistol handy, I just lay down and passed out.
    The last thing I remembered was worrying about my muddy boots. I’d not had a moment to get them off, and I feared to struggle with them, for it might start the bleeding again.
    Those muddy boots, and the firelight flickering on the walls…It seemed to me it was raining again, too.
    Chapter 8
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    T HE COLD AWAKENED me. I lay shivering, uncovered, on the bed. The cabin was dark; rain fell on the roof. The fire was out. Lightning flashed, momentarily lighting the room. Alone in a strange place, I knew I was sick…sicker than I’d ever been.
    Rolling over on the bed, I swung my muddy boots to the floor. My head was burning with fever, my mind searching through a fog of pain for the right thing to do. Stumbling to the fireplace, I fumbled with a poker and stirred a few dying coals among the gray ashes and the charred ends of sticks.
    With an effort, I clustered some of them near the coals and blew on them. Smoke rose, but there was no flame. I looked around for something for kindling, and finally tore a few handfuls of straw from the broom.
    A little tongue of fire fed on the straw, and made a quick, bright blaze, and I put on pieces of bark and slender sticks to keep it burning. I nudged the pot, and saw that steam still rose from it. Again I drank tea, sipping it slowly.
    Huddling near the fire, I shivered. One side of me was icy cold, the other burning. I fed more sticks into the fire, then wrestled a heavier piece and still another into the blaze.
    Then for the first time I saw a bootjack, and hooking my boot into it, I managed to draw off one and then the other. After that I tumbled back to the bed and crawled under the covers. At first I still shivered, but at