By Accident
Sam Jenkins wasn't sure afterward how it happened. One minute, he was moving toward town at a good clip, thinking about dinner and hoping for a quiet night by his own fire with a book. The next thing he knew, the world was spinning and he was looking out at it from underneath the overturned buggy.
The doctor had treated enough head injuries to recognize the symptoms of a concussion. He put a hand to his head and gingerly explored a swelling bump on the back of his head. He hurt in other places too. He checked groggily to make sure nothing was broken or bleeding. One leg was pinned under the buggy and he couldn't get it free.
His horse was down on its side, and struggling in the tangled harness and broken shafts. Sam looked over at his old friend, helpless to do anything to relieve its misery. He'd never carried a gun, never felt comfortable with the idea, but now he wished he had one. He struggled again to free himself and gave up. His head was throbbing and he closed his eyes, then opened them again as he remembered his own advice on concussions. He shouldn't fall asleep, since no one else was around to wake him regularly.
The horse tried again to get up, its eyes wild with fear, and Sam looked over at it miserably. It could be a long time before anyone passed by on this road. Anxious to get home after a long day, he had taken a little used shortcut across the Lancer ranch. It was miles from the hacienda and he knew there was a good chance no one would go by that night.
His housekeeper wasn't likely to miss him and raise the alarm. She'd probably figure that he'd gone on another call, or that he was staying the night on one of the ranches in the area. It wasn't uncommon. The doctor split his time between three small towns and dozens of ranches. The housekeeper would be more surprised if he turned up on time for supper than she would be when he didn't.
Sam shifted his head and winced. His stomach churned, not a good sign. He concentrated on not getting sick, and the nausea eventually passed.
His throat was dry and he looked around. The canteen had landed beyond his reach, along with his medical bag and just about anything useful. Sam sighed and tried to find a less uncomfortable position on the sun-baked ground.
It was getting dark and he was having a harder time staying awake when he heard the faint clip clop of a horse. It was moving slowly, with frequent stops, and Sam was puzzled until it finally came into sight, limping behind a lean young man who was on foot.
Sam had never been so glad to see anyone, but he still registered the facts that the youngest Lancer was also limping a little, his shirt was untucked, and his hat was missing altogether. He distinctly remembered telling that boy, just getting on his feet again after taking a bullet in the back, to take it easy, stay close to the house and keep his horse to a nice, gentle walk.
"Doc, you okay?" Johnny Lancer demanded, bending over him anxiously.
"No," the doctor said irritably. "Son, what did you do to yourself now?"
Johnny grinned at him, his blue eyes vivid in a slightly sunburned face. "I'm fine, Doc," he said. "Better than you. Hold on a second and I'll get you free from that buggy."
"No, Johnny," Sam said, putting a hand on the boy's arm. "Take care of my horse first. Please."
Johnny looked over at the horse, then at the doctor. "You sure?" he asked.
The doctor nodded, and Johnny went over to the roan horse. He bent down, but quickly straightened up.
"His leg's broke, Doc," Johnny said with real regret in his voice. "I'm sorry."
Sam had expected that. "Don't let him suffer any more, John."
Johnny kneeled down by the horse's head, and Sam could hear him speaking softly to the injured animal, although he couldn't make out the words. The shot, when it came, echoed through the valley, and Sam flinched. Johnny gave the horse a final pat, and turned away.
"Thanks," Sam said quietly when the boy came back to him.
Johnny offered him a canteen and helped him hold it. His face was remote. "Can you tell if anything's broken?"
"Just bruises, I think," Sam said after taking a sip of water. "The worst of it is the bang on the head."
"What happened?" Johnny asked.
Sam shook his head and was sorry. "I don't know," he said when the dizziness passed.
"Let's get you out of there," Johnny said, rooting around in the wreckage for something he could use as a lever.
"John," Sam said. "Wait. I don't think you should do this. I don't want you lifting anything for a while yet."
"It's got to be done," Johnny said. "It won't take long, Doc."
"When you don't turn up at the ranch, Murdoch will send people out to look for you," Sam said. "Why don't we wait for them?"
"No," Johnny said. "That could be all night, or longer. Nobody knows I went this way."
"You weren't supposed to," Sam pointed out.
One corner of Johnny's mouth tilted up irrepressibly. "Lucky thing I did," he retorted. "Do you think you can scoot yourself out when I lift up that buggy?"
Sam sighed. He'd known Johnny for less than a month but he recognized the determined look on his face and he just didn't feel up to arguing with him. "I can try," he said.
***
By Accident: Part 2
Johnny had built a fire. Sam blinked at it drowsily, mesmerized by the flames, when the boy woke him again.
"Doc?" Johnny repeated softly. "You okay?"
"Yes," Sam said, putting a hand to his head. He still had a headache but it wasn't as bad. "What about you, son?"
"I'm good," Johnny said, offering him the canteen. "You told me to wake you every two hours and to make you drink some water."
"I know," Sam sighed. Johnny had propped him up against his saddle and covered him with a blanket kept in the back of the buggy. It was still cold, even by the fire, now that the sun had gone down. Sam looked over at Johnny, who was wearing a cotton shirt and no jacket.
"You shouldn't be out here," he said, frowning. "I don't want you to have another bout with pneumonia."
"I'm fine," Johnny said, settling down on the other side of the fire. "Stop fussing, Doc."
Jenkins hid a smile. He knew the boy was impatient with what he called their fussing. He also knew some fussing was still necessary. Johnny had bounced back quicker than he would have believed possible from a bullet wound that easily could have killed him, and nearly had, but he still was a long way from being completely healed.
"Just what happened to your horse, anyway?" Sam asked. "Did you fall?"
"The horse fell, and I went down too," Johnny admitted. "Stepped in a gopher hole or something."
"While walking along at the nice, slow pace I told you to stick to?" Sam asked.
"Not exactly," Johnny said, flashing a smile at him. "What were you doing out here, Doc?"
"I took a shortcut," Sam said, noticing the change of subject but deciding to let it pass for now. "I was over at the Carson place. One of their boys fell out of a tree and broke his collarbone."
"Do they have a lot of kids?" Johnny asked.
"Four boys and three girls," Sam said, smiling at the thought of the cheerful, noisy Carson household.
Johnny wrapped his arms around his legs and stared at the fire. "I always wished for brothers and sisters when I was a kid," he said, unexpectedly.
"Did you?" Sam said, a little surprised. Johnny usually didn't offer information, especially not about his childhood. If you could even call it a childhood, Sam thought.
"Yeah," Johnny said, his eyes far away. Sam wondered what he was looking at, but he already knew better than to try to push him.
"I had five," he volunteered instead. "Three brothers and two sisters."
"Really?" Johnny said. "Where did you grow up, Doc?"
"New Hampshire," Sam said.
"Where's that?"
"Just north of Massachusetts and three times as snowy," Sam said. "We lived in a little town up in the hills. My father was the local doctor."
"Is your family still there?"
"No," Sam said. "Not any more. There's no one left but one sister, and she lives in St. Louis."
"Sorry," Johnny said, wrapping his arms tighter around his knees. His head drooped a little, and Sam looked at him sharply.
"Tired, son?" he asked.
"A little," Johnny admitted.
"Why don't you try to get some sleep? I'll be all right now."
"No," Johnny said. "Tell me about New Hampshire, Doc."
"Let's see," Sam said. "We weren't quite in the mountains but it's all rocky land, thin soil. It's a tough place for a farmer to make a living, but there's nobody more stubborn than a New Hampshire farmer."
"Not even Murdoch?" Johnny asked, his voice amused.
Sam smiled back. "Maybe not even you, John."
Johnny made a face at him and Sam laughed.
"The winters are hard. Bitterly cold and raw, and there's lots of snow. Sometimes it drifted right over the doors and windows and we'd have to dig our way out in the mornings."
Johnny shivered. "At least Mexico is warm," he said.
"My father used a sleigh to make his rounds in the winter," Sam said. "I used to drive him sometimes, once I was old enough."
"Did you always want to be a doctor?" Johnny asked curiously. "Like your father?"
"No," Sam said. "I figured that I'd be a lawyer. No late nights delivering babies, no interrupted meals. I had it all figured out."
"What changed your mind?"
"My oldest brother, Jack," Sam said. "He always knew he wanted to be a doctor. When I was 13, and he came home from school for the summer, there was an accident one night in the village. A wagon knocked down a little boy. Father was already out on a call, Mother had taken the girls visiting and my other brothers were out fishing. Jack and I were the only ones at home when someone ran to our door with the injured boy, who was a friend of my youngest brother. I had to help Jack try to save him."
"Did you?" Johnny asked.
"No," Sam said slowly. "Jack tried. He tried so hard, but the boy was too badly hurt. He died."
"And that made you want to be a doctor?"
"I wanted to learn to fight death too," Sam said simply. "I didn't realize that was what it was about, until that night."
Johnny considered it. "Makes sense," he said. He was quiet for a while. Sam thought he might have fallen asleep, but when he looked over, Johnny was still awake and staring into the fire.
"What are you thinking, John?" he asked.
Johnny ducked his head. "Just that I made the opposite choice," he said. "I decided to deal death when I was about 13."
***
By Accident: Part 3
Sam frowned. He had been alarmed when Murdoch Lancer told him that his younger son was a gunfighter, had even questioned whether it was a good idea to bring him home and warned Murdoch to be very careful. He hadn't ever expected to like him. He'd treated other gunfighters occasionally, men who weren't nearly as notorious as Johnny Madrid. He'd expected a cold, uncaring killer with no heart. Johnny confounded him when he met him. The boy was far from cold or uncaring. He had an artless charm and a mischievous sense of humor. He could and did put on a gunfighter's mask, but Doc suspected that was all it was, a mask that Johnny had learned to hide behind. He also suspected that Johnny paid a high price for the use of that mask.
"The circumstances were a little different, son," he said gently. "You chose to survive."
"Didn't have to do it with a gun," Johnny said. "I had other choices."
Not the ones you should have had, Sam thought, saddened by the idea of a 13-year-old Johnny making his way on his own. "Did you ever kill anyone who wasn't trying to kill you?" he asked.
"Yeah," Johnny said with barely a pause. "I did."
Sam was surprised. "On purpose?"
"Don't matter if it was on purpose or not," Johnny said, his voice flat. "They're still just as dead and it's my doing."
"It matters," Sam said. "Did you, John?"
"Do you think Murdoch really did send out search parties?" Johnny asked, standing up.
"John," Sam said softly. "Tell me, please."
Johnny paced restlessly by the fire. "No," he finally said. "But that don't excuse it, Doc."
This boy sure didn't look for excuses, Sam thought, although he had plenty available to him. He wished they weren't having this conversation while he had a concussion, but he didn't know if Johnny would ever consent to talk about this again and didn't want to lose the chance. Damn Maria Lancer, he thought, not for the first time. Her son should have grown up on his father's ranch, falling out of trees and off ponies like the Carson kids. Broken collarbones were much easier injuries for a doctor to heal.
"Everybody makes mistakes, John," Sam said. "You can be forgiven for a mistake. You can even forgive yourself, son."
There was a long silence on the other side of the fire. "I should get some more wood," Johnny said. "We might be here awhile yet. Probably until morning, at least."
Sam sighed, recognizing the signs that Johnny didn't intend to talk about this any more. Murdoch Lancer didn't need to be so hard on his long lost younger son, he thought, as Johnny disappeared into the darkness. Johnny was already hard enough on himself. He bitterly regretted his own advice to his old friend.
The first streaks of light were spreading across the horizon when horses woke Sam. Johnny was gone again. Sam had been faintly aware, on and off all night, of the boy keeping watch, getting up to gather wood, feed the fire, and shake him awake gently to make sure he was still lucid. Once, he had heard growling and yipping nearby, had heard Johnny cock his pistol.
"Don't, Johnny, not unless you have to," he said quietly. "It's their nature. The horse is dead."
The boy had looked over at him, the corner of his mouth turning up, and nodded faintly. He'd holstered his gun and Sam had dozed off.
Riders appeared on the road, followed by a wagon. They paused on the side of the road by the wrecked buggy and dead horse, quickly moved up to the fire.
"Sam?" Murdoch Lancer said, surprised to see the doctor. "What are you doing here?"
"Wrecked my buggy," Sam said, sitting up. "It was lucky that Johnny came along."
"Is he here?" Murdoch said. "When I see that boy..."
"Not today, Murdoch," Sam said firmly. "Those are doctor's orders and you better listen to me for once."
"Where is Johnny?" Scott Lancer asked quietly.
"He's probably looking for some more wood for the fire," Sam said. "He's been up all night, keeping that fire going and checking on me."
"Find him, Scott," Murdoch ordered. "Sam, are you all right?"
"I will be," Sam said. "Once I get a hot bath and some sleep."
"Why didn't you and Johnny ride back to the ranch on his horse?" Murdoch asked.
"His horse is lame," Doc said. "He was walking it home when he found me."
"Oh?" Murdoch said. "And just how did that happen?"
"Murdoch, let it go," Sam advised him.
"Did you forget that you're the one who gave the orders for him to stay close to the house and to take it easy?"
"I didn't forget," Sam said mildly. "And that hasn't changed either. But he's not a little boy, Murdoch, and if you treat him like one, you're going to lose him again."
Murdoch looked at his old friend. "Sam, I'm perfectly capable of straightening out a headstrong 19-year-old," he said. "I've been doing it for years."
"He's not another hired hand and he's far from a typical 19-year-old," Sam said. "I'm warning you, Murdoch, take it easy."
Scott found Johnny in the woods, gathering branches for firewood. "Looks like it was a long night, little brother," he said, taking in Johnny's bedraggled appearance.
"Yeah," Johnny agreed. "It was. You alone, Boston?"
Scott shook his head. "I'm afraid not, Johnny," he said. "Murdoch is talking to Dr. Jenkins."
"Oh," Johnny said.
Scott's lip twitched at the forlorn look on his brother's face. Although he didn't agree with the harsh way Murdoch treated his younger brother, he also understood how Murdoch could forget that Johnny wasn't just a kid. He was only 19, there were times when he looked even younger, and this was one of them. "Come on," Scott said gently. "Let's get it over with, so we can go home. I could use some breakfast."
Johnny brightened a little. "Me too," he said. "I'm starved."
Murdoch and Sam watched them approach. Murdoch had looked at the bay horse that Johnny had been riding and his temper was flaring again.
"Johnny, this horse won't be able to do any work for weeks, maybe months," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out he's torn the ligaments in that leg. What happened?"
Johnny shrugged. "He went down," he said, his face expressionless.
Murdoch opened his mouth, caught Sam's eye, and closed it again. "Let's get both of you back to the house," he said tersely.
***
By Accident: Part 4
Johnny promptly fell asleep in the back of the wagon, despite the jarring motion as it rattled over the road. Sam, sitting next to him, gently pushed him over until he was lying on his side in the hay and slipped a bedroll under his head. Johnny didn't even stir. He was still fast asleep when the wagon rolled into the yard and came to a stop outside the house.
"Is he all right?" Murdoch asked gruffly, looking at his younger son.
"I think so," Sam said. "He's just worn out. It's going to take some time for him to get his strength back, and he's pushing himself to do more than he should. He's exhausted, but he'll be okay, Murdoch."
Murdoch offered a hand and helped Sam down from the wagon.
"I was worried, Sam," he said. "When he didn't come home yesterday..."
"I know," Sam said. "I would have worried too, Murdoch."
Murdoch looked at his son again. "Should we wake him?" he asked. "He probably hasn't eaten anything since lunch yesterday, and he didn't eat much then."
Sam smiled. "I don't think you're going to wake him with anything short of dynamite," he said. "Get him up to his room and just let him sleep. He can eat later."
"I'll take him upstairs," Scott said quickly. "You two go on inside."
Johnny woke up late in the afternoon in his own bed, with no memory of how he got there. He stretched lazily, wincing as a few new bruises complained, and pushed the covers back. The floor was cool against his bare feet. Someone had taken off his clothes and put a nightshirt on him. He just hoped it was his brother or father, and not the stern Mexican housekeeper or, even worse, the girl.
He padded over to the open window and looked out toward the barn and corrals. His palomino was in the pasture, running in a graceful circle. Johnny whistled, and the horse immediately wheeled and looked over at the house. Doc wouldn't let him ride the half-broken palomino yet. Johnny sighed a little. He wasn't used to anyone telling him what he could and couldn't do. Doc wasn't so bad, but his father just barked out his orders and expected Johnny to jump.
The ranch was peaceful in the afternoon sun and Johnny slid down, propping his head against his arms on the windowsill. He hadn't bargained for the way the land would get under his skin. He already loved the ranch. He'd fallen for it that first day, when the girl stopped to show him and his new brother the view from the rise. He'd never felt that way about a place before. He'd rarely stayed in one place very long.
The door opened and Johnny whirled, hoping that his new foster sister hadn't barged in again without knocking. He wasn't sure it was better when he saw the visitor. It was his father, carrying a tray.
"I thought you might be ready for some food," Murdoch said.
"You didn't have to go to any trouble," Johnny said warily. "I can get dressed and go downstairs."
"It's no trouble, Johnny," Murdoch said, setting the tray down on the table. "Come over here and eat while it's still hot."
Johnny sat down and picked up a fork. He looked at his father uneasily, and Murdoch moved over to the window and looked out.
"That palomino of yours is a beauty," he said absently. "The men are still talking about the way you broke him. Where'd you learn to do that?"
Johnny hesitated. "Worked in the stables on a ranch for a while when I was just a kid," he said.
"Did you?" Murdoch said, wondering what his son meant when he said he was just a kid. Had he been 11 or maybe 12 or 13? There was a gap of a few years in the Pinkerton reports, between the orphanage where he'd spent a few months after his mother's death and Johnny's first gunfight. Murdoch shook his head, and pushed away his regrets and his curiosity. Johnny had tensed up and stopped eating.
"We could use someone who's good with horses," Murdoch said. "We'll see what you can do once Doc says it's okay."
The blue eyes lit up at the idea. "Really?"
Murdoch couldn't believe the transformation in his son's face, or how little it had taken. In the past few weeks, he had seen the boy when he was angry, sad, sullen, scared and sick. He hadn't seen him happy. For the first time, he could see the laughing toddler he remembered. He hadn't ever expected to see those sparkling eyes or the heart-stopping smile on the gunfighter.
"Really," Murdoch said, smiling back. "Only it's going to be a few more weeks yet before you're ready to break horses. Longer if you don't eat and don't do what Doc says."
Johnny glanced down at his forgotten meal, as if he was surprised to see it, and picked up the fork again.
"We haven't done much with the horses since Teresa's father died," Murdoch said. "Lancer palominos were just starting to develop a name. Yours was one of the best colts. Of course, the stallion is gone now. We'd have to start all over again and it's likely to be a long time before we can spare the money for another stallion like the one we lost."
"I saw a herd of wild horses in the canyon yesterday," Johnny said, forgetting about his meal again. "They looked pretty good. Maybe we could start with a wild stallion."
Murdoch was still enjoying the eager look on his son's face, but he gave a pointed look at Johnny's plate. Johnny grinned and took a gulp of milk from the tall glass on the tray.
"Maybe we could," Murdoch said. "Once we get some of the rest of the work done."
"Guess there's probably a lot of it," Johnny said softly. "Wish Doc would let me off the leash."
"Don't rush it, John," Murdoch said. "We have plenty of time."
Johnny's eyes flew to his father's face. "Think so?" he asked. His face was wistful, like a child looking at something he knew he couldn't have.
Murdoch looked at his son and pushed away his own misgivings. Gunfighters didn't have long futures. He knew it and Johnny knew it too, he realized. And he just didn't know if Johnny could settle down to be a rancher, or if his past would let him alone. "Yes," he said firmly. "Now, finish those eggs, young man."
THE END
Whistle, August 2004