The Barefoot Bride by Joan Johnston

moment he was unbuttoning her dress. Nothing with Molly Gallagher was turning out as he'd planned. How in the world had things gone so awry?
    “You better be careful, Pa,” Patch said.
    “What?” Seth replied absently, unwilling to give up watching the widow Gallagher.
    “She looks like more trouble than she's worth,” Patch said earnestly. “And think about that whiny baby, Pa. It'll be a misery for sure having her around the house. And lord knows what mischief that boy'll start. I—”
    “She's going to be my wife, Patch,” Sethsaid. “And she'll be your mother. Her children will become part of our family. You'd best get used to the idea.”
    Patch shook her head no. “I won't stand for it, Pa.”
    Seth hardened his voice against the pain he saw in his daughter's eyes. “You don't have any choice.”
    “Durned if I don't!” she cried. “Marry her if you gotta, Pa. But she ain't gonna be my ma. And they ain't gonna be my kin!”
    Seth clenched his fists as he watched Patch thrust her way through the crowd on deck and scramble down the gangplank. He was doing this for her own good. Someday she would thank him for it. He shoved a hand through his damp hair in frustration.
    “Shall we go?”
    The sound of Molly's husky voice sent a shiver down Seth's spine. She hadn't taken the time to comb her hair, but she had grabbed a shawl to wrap around the bodice of her dress. He forced himself not to remember the way the wet material had clung to her figure. There would be time later to think about the hell on earth he had created for himself with this marriage of convenience.
    “Let's go,” he said tersely. “I have a bullet to dig out of a man's hide.”
    Molly extended her step to match Seth's stride. All in all, things hadn't gone as badly as she had feared they might. At least he wasn't sending them right back to New Bedford on the next steamboat. Now all she had to do was prove she could be a competent nurse. That shouldn't be so hard. Why, she had gutted fish all the time back in New Bedford. Could the sight of a little blood from a gunshot wound be so very different?

 
    Molly had never seen so much blood in her life. It soaked the checkered shirt of the man lying on the floor of the Medicine Bow Saloon and stained the sawdust beneath him. She swallowed down the bile that rose in her throat and stayed as close as she could to Seth's side.
    ‘Tut him up on the bar,” Seth said, setting his travel-worn medical bag down on the polished surface.
    “Aw, come on, Doc. I'm trying to sell whiskey here,” Red complained.
    “I need a place where I can see to work.”
    Red grimaced. “You boys heard Doc Ken-drick. Haul him up here.”
    Several bystanders hoisted the man from the floor onto the mahogany bar. Seth carefully pulled the fabric away from the gaping hole in the man's chest. Bloody bubbles of air surrounded the wound.
    “Am I gonna make it, Doc?” the wounded man gasped.
    “What's your name?” Seth asked.
    “Wally Flanders.”
    “Just take it easy, Wally. I'll do my best.”
    Molly wasn't sure what she was supposed to do. So at first she did nothing, just stood and watched as Seth cut away the cloth from the wound. At Seth's command she supported the wounded man's head while the bartender held a whiskey bottle to his lips, then watched him pour whiskey from the same bottle over Seth's hands.
    Seth motioned for several men to hold the wounded man down while he probed for the bullet.
    Molly's hands gripped the smooth mahogany bar and held on as the man screamed and fainted.
    “Thank God for that,” Seth muttered. “Mrs. Gallagher,” he said, “come over here and hand me my instruments when I ask for them.”
    “I don't know—”
    “Come over here,” Seth ordered. “I'll teach you what you need to know.”
    Molly sighed inwardly with relief. She could follow simple instructions. Seth need never find out she wasn't a real nurse.
    Molly retained only impressions of the operation that took