The Drifter's Bride by Tatiana March

on his side, eyes closed, face pale, the sparse strands of sandy hair in disarray around his head. His hat had fallen a few feet away. The sweet scent of crushed peaches floated in the air. An angry welt of a bee sting was swelling on his cheek.
    Jade fell to her knees by his side. ‘Pa, are you hurt?’
    Motionless, he made no reply. Jade pressed her fingers to the base of his throat, feeling for a pulse. His skin was warm, and moist with perspiration. Relief swamped her as she detected a faint but steady beat.
    Taking care, she ran her hands along the worn fabric of his flannel shirt and denim pants. When she reached the right leg, her father stirred and emitted a hoarse moan.
    She bent over his face. ‘Pa?’
    His lids fluttered open. ‘Jade…’
    ‘Yes, father.’ Tears burned in her eyes. ‘Thank God.’
    ‘My leg…’
    ‘I think it’s broken. I’ll get the buckboard. Doc Mortensen will fix you up.’
    ‘It’ll cost money. Can’t you…’ He spoke in grunting bursts.
    ‘Pa.’ Jade rose to her feet, brusque efficiency replacing the sharp jolt of fear. ‘Apache chants and herbs might cure fevers but they won’t set broken bones. You’ll need a doctor.’ She hurried off toward the barn without wasting time on talk.
    * * *
    Doc Mortensen was a gangly man close to seventy, with a shock of white hair and an abrupt, somewhat abrasive manner. Jade did what she could to help him as he gave Sam Armstrong whiskey for the pain and splinted the leg, all the while lecturing his patient about the need to rest while the injury healed.
    When he was finished, he motioned for Jade to follow him out of the treatment room. ‘Let Sam rest for a couple of hours,’ he said. ‘Give him a chance to gather his strength before you drive him home.’
    Jade grimaced. ‘Can’t I just leave him here?’
    ‘Rough journey?’
    ‘I thought I’d never get him up on the buckboard. Then he insisted that I load the peaches, as we were coming into town.’ She spread her hands. ‘If I drove fast, he yelled at me for torturing him with jolts. If I drove slowly, he accused me of dragging out his suffering.’
    The doctor settled in the big leather chair behind his office desk and crossed his hands over his concave belly. ‘What’s happened to the buckskins, and the eagle feather in your hair? You got tired of shocking the White-Eyes?’
    Jade felt her cheeks burn. ‘I was in too much of a hurry to put them on.’
    The old man opened a drawer and rifled through the papers inside. When he located a file with her father’s name on top, he pulled it out, uncapped a fountain pen and made notes.
    ‘That husband of yours came by,’ he said absently.
    ‘Carl?’
    ‘Said you were going to be an Apache medicine woman. He thought it might help to know a bit of White-Eye doctoring and asked me how you might go about learning. I’ve got an old copy of A Manual of Medical Diagnosis by Andrew Whyte Barclay that you can have, if you like.’
    He capped his pen and put away the notes. Spinning around in his chair, he reached to the bookcase behind him, pulled out a worn book in brown cloth binding, and handed it to her.
    Jade examined the book, opened a page at random. A diagram. The bones in the human hand. Her eyes widened. So many of them. She lifted her own hand, splaying the fingers and flexing them, studying the movement of the joints.
    Doc Mortensen adjusted his gangly frame in the chair. ‘I need someone to help out in the surgery once in a while. You could do it. Learn a bit of doctoring.’ His gray eyes narrowed. ‘But first you’ll need to win over the people in town. I can’t have the Indian Wars played out in my medical practice.’
    Jade hesitated. ‘People hate me because I’m a half-breed.’
    ‘It’s not just that. People resent you for creating a rift on purpose. You can’t blame them for reacting when you’ve put so much effort into baiting them, riding around looking like little chief Minnehaha, running off to