Comanche Rose by Anita Mills

much. While a third attendant cleaned up the mess, the surgeon kept talking, repeating Walker's name at every opportunity, trying to focus his patient on what he had to do.
    "That the same leg where you took the Comanchero bullet, Hap?" Sprenger asked him. When Walker didn't answer, he spoke directly into his ear. "I'm going to take a look at it," he said loudly. "I'm going to see what's the matter with your leg."
    Walker's eyes opened. "Clay—?"
    "Boy's in Texas. You don't know where you are, do you, Hap?"
    "Tell him, got to get word to him..."
    "Tell him what? What do you want me to tell him? That you're sick? I expect we'll try to get word out as soon as the storm's over."
    "Sanchez-Torres coming... New Mexico..."
    "Sanchez-Torres is dead. Your boy McAlester took care of him last summer."
    "He's dead? Clay—?"
    "Way I heard it, McAlester blew him up, plumb to smithereens."
    "Good." Hap closed his eyes.
    Sprenger took out a straight-edged razor and stropped it. "I'm going to have to cut off your pants for a look-see, Hap."
    "No," Walker croaked.
    "Not your leg, your pants." The surgeon looked up at Nash. "Hold him real still, trooper. If he thrashes around, there's no telling what I'm liable to cut."
    "Yes, sir."
    "Walsh, get on the other side and hold that foot, but don't turn it. Yeah, that's it."
    As cold as it was in the infirmary, Sprenger wiped his brow with his sleeve, then made a light stroke, slicing the weathered buckskin several inches below Hap's groin. Working carefully, he cut a flap that extended down to the knee. He laid the razor aside and lifted it back, exposing the leg beneath. About mid-thigh, he found a puckered scar. At a cursory glance, it appeared to be almost healed, but the flesh around it told a different story. It was hot and swollen with red streaks extending both upward and downward from it.
    "Looks like it's going septic," he muttered. "Parker, get me the chloroform, will you? Soak the rag with a good capful," he ordered over his shoulder.
    "Need the capital saw?" Nash asked.
    Sprenger shook his head. "Not yet. I'd like to see what's down there first." Turning to the basin nearby, he washed his hands thoroughly with strong-smelling lye soap, then toweled them dry. "It's an old wound, so there's got to be a reason it's infected. And one way or another, I'm going to have to clean it out, or it's going to kill him."
    "Looks like it should have been an amputation in the first place," Parker observed. "The bullet had to have hit the bone."
    "Looks that way, doesn't it?" Returning his attention to Hap, the surgeon asked him, "Boydston over at Griffin fix this, or was it Abbott down at Stockton? I'd say one of 'em botched the business, and I'd sure as hell tell 'em about it if I were you."
    Hap opened his eyes again, saw the surgeon's operating case, and for a moment he thought he was at Shiloh. "No," he gasped, grasping the surgeon's left hand. "Don't cut. Too many limbs out there already."
    Sprenger pulled free. "If I don't have to, I won't," he promised. "Chloroform ready?"
    "Yes, sir. Here it is, sir," the corporal responded promptly. "Right at your elbow."
    Reaching back, the older man took the cloth, checked it, then leaned forward, pressing it over Hap Walker's nose. "Take a good whiff, and you'll be out cold before I get to the good part."
    Instead, Hap began struggling, clutching Sprenger's arms, trying to rise from the table. But the two soldiers on either side held him down until he was still.
    "Don't know why they always fight it, but they do," the doctor muttered. He lifted the cloth for a quick look, then nodded. "He's out. Parker, keep your finger on his pulse and stand ready with liquor of ammonia if it weakens."
    "Yes, sir."
    Sprenger surveyed the thigh again. "Another inch, and it would have hit the artery. Then he'd have bled to death," he murmured. "Nash—?"
    "Yes, sir?"
    "Put your thumb on the femoral artery in his groin and slow the blood through it."
    "Yes, sir."
    Turning to