Chapter 10: Where the Heart Is
The Garrett mansion, Boston
A faint noise drew Scott's attention to the windows of the east wing. The light reflected from the windows was blinding, but Scott thought he saw someone moving by an open window, Johnny's room, he realized.
He leaned back, shading his eyes against the glare.
"Hello!" he called "Who's …?"
The crash of the gunshot brought Johnny to his feet, overturning his chair, as Scott was thrown to the flagstones.
Johnny's fine-tuned reactions sent his hand to his holsterless thigh, before memory caught up with reflex.
Cursing in frustration and fear, Johnny vaulted the table, sending dishes flying.
The shot had silenced the twittering birds outside, but roused the slumbering inhabitants of the house. Johnny heard cries of alarm from the house and a rustle in the bushes, as if a rabbit fled the suddenly dangerous veranda.
Johnny paused, back pressed to the flimsy doorjamb, to survey the scene. Nothing moved. God, even Scott didn't move. Voices were growing louder in the house, but Johnny could sense no danger outside.
Even if bullets had been falling like hailstones, they couldn't have kept the unarmed man from the side of his brother.
Scott's eyes were wide with shock that turned to a plea when they met Johnny's. The wounded man's mouth worked, but no sound emerged; then Scott went limp.
For a terrifying moment, Johnny thought he held his brother's dead body; but he saw Scott was still breathing, with difficulty, but with regularity. Then there was still a chance, Johnny realized, if he could just stop the blood that poured from Scott's chest.
A leap carried Johnny to the dining room, which he stripped of its fine linen napkins. He ran back to Scott. He tried to stanch the flow of blood, but could only slow it down. The gaping wound frightened Johnny more than any of the horrors of his 23 years. He pushed away the thought that he'd never seen anyone survive such a grave wound.
God! Wasn't anyone ever going to come?
Someone was. Boots crunched heavily on the gravel path leading from the stables. Random skidded to a halt, stunned by the gory scene, as Hodges and his wife in hastily donned robes, tumbled out of the dining room. They stopped, just as shocked.
"Where's the nearest doctor?" Johnny snapped. Fear made his voice harsh, but the harshness seemed to steady the others.
"Boston City Hospital, just around the corner," Hodges gasped.
Johnny remembered Scott pointing out the stately dome on Worcester Square.
"The wagon's hitched," Random announced. He spun and was gone.
Mrs. Hodges chased her husband inside to get dressed, if he was going with Johnny to the hospital. She grabbed some clean dishtowels from the kitchen and returned to the veranda on the run.
The family poured down the stairway, but Johnny's snarl kept them back when they threatened to overflow out the French doors. It took a moment for the sense of the bloody scene to penetrate, then Caroline's scream shook the already shaken family.
"Scott!" she cried hysterically. "You've killed him! You've killed him!" she screamed at Johnny.
Her husband turned away, sick. Her father-in-law grabbed her, shook her and slapped her hard, as if he'd always wanted to. Caroline collapsed into sobs. Frederick threw her into surprised Winifred's arms.
"Keep her quiet," Frederick ordered, then pushed his way onto the veranda to help.
Annabell took charge of the crowd, ordering the children away and sending Eve up to sit with Harlan, who was shouting questions from his bedroom.
Johnny ignored them all. He smoothed his brother's forehead with a trembling hand. Scott moaned.
"Stay with me, Scott. Don't leave me. Don't leave," Johnny pleaded.
The rattle and clash of a heavy wagon pierced the air. Random whipped the horses in a mad charge through the manicured flowerbed. The double team plowed through the shrubbery, uprooting plants with their tearing hooves, carving a long scar with the wheels of the heavy utility wagon.
Random turned the team in the tulip bed and backed onto the veranda. The men lifted Scott to the bed of the wagon. Johnny leaped in and cradled Scott's head in his lap. He pressed a red wad of towels against the wound, which refused to stop bleeding.
With Hodges beside him, Random sent the team forward at a brisk walk, trying to make speed without bouncing the injured man.
Boston City Hospital
The hospital staff took charge with brisk efficiency. They whisked Scott away, leaving Johnny standing at loose ends, feeling suddenly, horribly alone. Still covered with his brother's blood, Johnny's hands trembled uncontrollably as he stood in the hall like a lost child. A kindly nurse showed him where he could wash up. Johnny took a long time, working slowly, even rubbing ineffectually at the stains on his clothes. Concentrating on the washing helped him not think about Scott.
When he finally made his way back to the waiting room, he sent Hodges and Random back to the house to tell everyone what had happened. Then he settled down to wait.
Actually, he didn't settle down at all. He paced restlessly around the halls. With sweat on his forehead, he shivered nervously and rubbed his hands as if to warm them.
Patience was a virtue Johnny Madrid had cultivated. He could wait coolly for the executioner to swing his axe, as long as it was his own head on the chopping block. With his brother's life at peril and nothing he could do to help, Johnny was as fretful as a steer in a windstorm.
With no word from the house or from the doctor, Johnny's wait seemed to last forever. Actually, it was little more than an hour before Dr. Andrew MacGregor hurried out of the operating room. Trained in the days before anesthetics, the middle-aged surgeon still operated with remarkable speed even when chloroform was available.
He approached Johnny with a haste that brought the westerner to his feet. The doctor hadn't bothered to change the blood-spattered coat he used for operations. The grave expression on his face made Johnny's throat contract.
"Doc?" Johnny wouldn't have recognized that hoarse croak as his own.
His hurry thickened the doctor's Scottish brogue.
"Lad, I'm afraid your brother is dying," he said.
The stricken look in Johnny's eyes made the doctor hurry on.
"Now, it's not hopeless, yet. There's a chance, if you're willing. Lad, I need your blood."
Johnny was totally bewildered. MacGregor sat him down on a bench and took the seat next to him.
"Listen carefully, we've not much time but I won't have you doing this blind," he said. "You know your brother lost a great deal of blood before you got here…" Unconsciously Johnny rubbed his hands together. "… and he lost more during the operation," the doctor continued. "We retrieved the bullet from the lung and repaired the damage. We followed Lister's process, a new process that seems to help prevent infection. I'd say he has a good chance for recovery, except for the blood loss. His pulse is getting fainter and his heart rhythm is showing irregularities. Lad, with your permission, I'd like to give him what we call a blood transfusion."
Johnny looked blank.
The doctor explained, "I will take some of your blood and put it into your brother."
"Can you do that?" Johnny asked in confusion.
"It's been done. Yes," MacGregor said. "But there's a risk. Blood transfusions are safe in better than 50 percent of the cases. The chances are even better when the donor and the patient are close relatives, such as brothers."
Johnny was beginning to comprehend a little.
"Doc, Scott and I are half-brothers — same father, different mothers. Does that make a difference?"
"It might, but we don't really know for sure. Successful transfusions have been made between total strangers; yet in one case I know, the blood of a woman was given to her full sister and we might as well have pumped poison in her system. We don't know why, but some transfusions are fatal."
"You mean, there's a chance my blood would poison Scott?"
"Yes. The odds are in our favor, but there is that chance. That's why …" The doctor let it trail off.
"That's why you only try this when the patient had no other hope," Johnny finished in an empty voice.
MacGregor nodded.
The former gunfighter faced the hard truth squarely and knew there was no decision to make. Lancers fight to the last drop of blood. "Let's do it, Doc."
The operating room reeked of chloroform and carbolic, but Johnny hardly noticed. He stared at his brother's still form. Scott laid motionless, jaw slack, on a wooden table. Partly covered by a blood-spattered sheet, he was as pale as the white bandage strapped around his chest. For a panicky moment, Johnny thought they were too late, but then he saw the faint movement of Scott's chest.
"Bring the Higginson's syringe. Lively now!" MacGregor ordered.
The young doctors had fallen into a self-conscious silence upon Johnny's entry. MacGregor's command galvanized them into action. One pushed another table close to the operating table. He told Johnny to take off his shirt, then lie down.
The other young man brought a clattering tray of instruments to MacGregor.
Johnny lay gingerly on the table, never taking his eyes from Scott, not even when MacGregor opened the vein in his arm and tied in the rubber tube.
The dimly remembered prayers of Johnny's Mexican childhood returned, blurred by the many years when he believed in nothing but his gun and his reflexes.
"Santa Maria, Madre de Dios, por favor…" he whispered.
"Dr. Cliff, please check the patient's pulse," MacGregor said as he concentrated on finding the shrunken vein in Scott's arm.
The younger doctor stationed at Scott's head felt for the carotid artery.
"It's getting weaker, sir. I can hardly feel it."
"Well, we're ready now, lad," MacGregor said. He gestured toward the bulb at the center of the rubber tube that linked Johnny and Scott. "Dr. Swanson, I want you to pump this gently, but steadily. We'll draw a pint, no more. Carefully now."
With great care, the assistant surgeon began pumping the bulb on the syringe. MacGregor nodded in approval, as the tube swelled with fluid and the sound of the pump changed. As the blood came out the far end, MacGregor made the last incision to insert it into his patient's vein. He nodded again in satisfaction as the vein swelled with the life-giving fluid.
The surgeon turned to Johnny who had used his free arm to prop himself up to watch the procedure.
"Keep still, lad, and try not to move that arm around," he cautioned.
Johnny only half-heard. He seemed to feel the blood being drawn out and willed life and strength into that flow.
Pulse is stronger, sir," Cliff reported, but it wasn't necessary. Everyone in the room could see traces of color returning to Scott's skin. His breathing deepened. Though it sounded pained, Johnny thought it was the finest sound he'd ever heard. The younger Lancer's eyes blurred with tears of relief.
MacGregor and Cliff busied themselves checking vital signs. Swanson dutifully kept pumping.
Johnny blinked away the tears, but the blurring remained. That surprised Johnny. He lifted his free hand to rub his eyes, and couldn't keep his balance on his side. He thumped onto his back, which surprised him more.
It surprised MacGregor, too.
When he saw Johnny staring dizzily at the ceiling, he snatched the bulb away from his startled assistant.
"I said a pint! Can ye no watch what yuir doin'?" he roared.
Stricken, Swanson stammered apologies. He hurriedly explained he'd never done a blood transfusion before. MacGregor calmed down fast when he saw Johnny wasn't seriously hurt. He waved Swanson to silence.
"My own fault. You had no way to measure it. I should have been watching," the surgeon said, as he disconnected the tube and closed and bandaged the small incision.
Johnny felt strange; but it was a familiar kind of strange. Professional gunfighters have been known to suffer from sudden blood loss upon violent occasion; so the dizziness and weakness were familiar. But Johnny thought it was strange to feel that way without having a gaping hole somewhere in his body.
"Mr. Lancer?" MacGregor's voice drew back Johnny's wandering attention. "We only meant to take a pint, but it seems we may have taken nearly twice that."
Johnny focused his gaze on MacGregor's homely face. He said with simple sincerity, "You can have it all if it'll help Scott."
MacGregor smiled gently.
"I don't think that will be necessary. His condition seems to be stabilizing."
"Will he be all right?" Johnny asked with dawning hope.
"I couldn't say, lad. The crisis is over, but the battle had only begun. Infection is the real killer. By the grace of God, we've no epidemics here, but pyaemia is always a chance, even with my old professor's carbolic treatment. We'll have to hope you're brother can fight it off. He is young and healthy, that's in his favor. There's no more I can tell you. It's in God's hands now."
The two young doctors wheeled Scott out of the room. Johnny watched in silence, but as the door swung closed, he heaved himself into a sitting position. His head clamored and a grayness washed the edge of his vision, but he braced himself upright and fought down the dizziness and the nausea.
MacGregor's voluble protests gave Johnny something to focus on and helped him regain his equilibrium. He gave the Scotsman a feeble but game grin and shook his head, very slowly.
"No, I can't stay here. I've got things to do. I've got to wire my father and I've got to find out who shot my brother. I can't do either while I'm lying here."
"You've lost too much blood to go traipsin' about. You need to rest for a bit." MacGregor was expounding on the theme, and coming close to convincing Johnny who wasn't feeling any better, when the operating room door banged open.
MacGregor spun around in exasperation, ready to roar, but confusion choked off his anger. The men were strangers, not members of the hospital staff.
"Who're you?" he demanded, then he blinked in surprise at the belated realization that three of the four intruders were uniformed constables.
"Hi Wes," Johnny said to the fourth man.
Constable Jeremiah Wesley's face was set in hard lines. He looked like a man expecting trouble. His unbuttoned coat was pushed back and his hand rested ominously on his sidearm.
A warning stabbed at Johnny's instinct for self-preservation. He was too muzzy to puzzle it out, but the internal alarm drove him to his feet. He had to keep a tight grip on the table, because vertigo clawed at him fiercely.
The ragged shreds of a stubborn will brought up his dimming eyes to meet the constable's.
"John Lancer," Wes said, his voice empty of all emotion. "I'm placing you under arrest for the attempted murder of your brother, Scott Lancer."
The shock rocked Johnny.
He said, "That's crazy," as he took one step forward, one step too many. Then he was falling. He looked at the floor rising toward him and thought, academically, that the impact was going to hurt. But he hit oblivion before he hit the ground, so he never knew that MacGregor caught him while the constables stared at the deadly gunfighter, unconscious on the operating room floor.
Office of the Boston Constabulary
Well-wrapped in blankets, Johnny woke up in a darkened cell of an unfamiliar jail. He felt chilly, curiously light-headed and not inclined to move, so he curled in a bundle while he prodded his sluggish brain into remembering where he was and why.
God, I feel strange, he thought. Have I been sick?
There was something about a hospital, he remembered. And a doctor … MacGregor!
With that recognition, the fuzzy images in his mind resolved into clarity and he remembered. He closed his eyes and pulled the blankets closer, fighting again the chilling double shock of Scott's injury and his own arrest. He struggled until he found the stubborn core of his personality that refused to give up. It was that fighting spirit that kept an orphaned child alive in a series of vicious border towns, that allowed him to kill a bullying professional gunhawk when he was only fifteen.
Johnny breathed deep, finding the professional calm that carried him through so many fights.
And when he breathed deep, he smelled food.
Johnny opened his eyes and cocked his head at Wes who stood outside the cell, a steaming bowl of stew in his hands.
"'Lo, Wes," he said without moving from his comfortable cocoon.
"Johnny," Wes acknowledged. "Brought you some food. Dr. MacGregor said you'd be hungry when you woke up."
"He was right," Johnny agreed, struggling to sit up without losing his blankets.
Wes entered the cell and sat at the end of the bunk, studying Johnny while the Californian wolfed down the stew. Johnny returned the scrutiny with interest.
Wes had lost the contained hostility he'd shown in the operating room. Now he just looked puzzled.
"How's Scott?" Johnny asked with his mouth full.
"Still hanging on. He hasn't been able to answer any questions, though. Scott's developed a fever — sepsis, MacGregor called it. I had to look it up to find out it meant 'infection.' He looks so sick, it scares me; but MacGregor doesn't seem overly concerned."
Wes looked at his hands. His concern for his old friend was obvious. Johnny shared it. He kept seeing that white form on the operating table.
"MacGregor hasn't been overly cooperative since I arrested you," Wes said. "He says it's ridiculous to believe you would shoot Scott, then give your blood to save his life. I'm inclined to agree."
He looked at Johnny for a long moment, then continued gently. "What happened, Johnny? Was it an accident? Did the gun go off by itself?"
Johnny's jaw stopped its motion. He swallowed and said calmly, "Wes, I guess you're not going to believe this, but I didn't shoot Scott. And I don't know why you think I did."
Wes bowed his head. When he looked up, his eyes were bleak.
"OK," he said with real regret. "You could have had it the easy way. Now … I hope you're as tough as you think you are."
The room was bare and stuffy. All three men were sweating heavily.
Chief Constable Marcus Powers slammed his hand on the table, making the room's only lamp jiggle and dance. Powers started at the beginning again.
"Why'd you shoot him, Lancer?" he roared.
"I didn't," Johnny said tightly. "The shot came from upstairs. I was in the dining room."
"It was your gun, Johnny," Wes said with sweet reasonableness.
"I left the gun upstairs. I haven't worn it since I got to Boston. Scott told me I wouldn't need it. You told me I wouldn't need it," Johnny accused.
"You were heard arguing last night."
"We weren't arguing. Scott was just blowing off steam."
"Was it for the money, Lancer?" Powers asked. "Half a ranch is better than a third. And your father is getting old. Soon you'll have it all to yourself."
Johnny didn't answer. He closed his eyes in weariness. His face was white and drawn, and he was trembling from weakness. It was almost dawn and they'd been at it all night, going over and over the same points.
"Damn it, Johnny. How do you expect us to believe you're innocent? It was your gun. We found it in the bushes where you threw it."
Johnny knew now it hadn't been a rabbit he heard.
"You were the only one there, and you're the only one with any motive. No one else in that house gains anything from Scott's death. And you expect us to believe you're innocent?" Wes demanded.
""Yes!" Johnny snapped, his composure gone. "Yes! If you understood, you'd know it didn't make any sense!"
"Then explain it to us, Johnny," Wes said softly.
He and Powers were surprised. They'd achieved what they had wanted, but not what they'd expected. They'd opened him up, but they hadn't broken his story, only his habitual reserve.
Johnny looked at Wes and smiled feebly. "You remember Scott's metaphor, about me being broke to halter but not to saddle …"
Wes nodded.
"…Well, it's not true. Murdoch and Scott have got me broke to harness — but I can only pull as part of a team. If I had Lancer all to myself, I'd probably kick over the traces and run away," Johnny said. "It's just over two years since I found out I had a family. I'm not ready to give them up, yet. I've got no reason to kill Scott. Every reason not to."
Johnny looked up from contemplating his hands. His expression hardened.
"And if I did want to kill him, why would I come clear to Boston to do it. There's plenty of empty territory around Lancer where a body would never be found.
Johnny's ice blue eyes bored into the law officers. "And in the third place, if you know anything about Johnny Madrid, you'd know that if I'd meant to kill Scott, I would have."
Johnny's feral gaze drove the constables back a step. The sense of danger that emanated from him was almost palpable.
Then with a blink, the sensation passed and they were looking at a young man with dark hair dangling in front of a white face, who looked more like a tired child than a professional gunslinger.
"I didn't shoot Scott," he said wearily. "I couldn't have. I wouldn't have. He's my brother."
Johnny closed his eyes, drew his feet up on the chair, put his head on his knees, and went to sleep.
Powers gestured for Wes to follow him outside. Wes asked what his superior thought.
"Either that boy is the best liar I've ever seen, or he's not lying," the chief constable said. "The trouble is, all the evidence is against him."
"You know the bullet wound was odd," Wes said. "By MacGregor's description of the wound, the bullet could have come from above like Johnny said."
"Or Scott could have been bending over when the shot hit. No, there's no hard evidence that Johnny didn't do it, and a lot of circumstantial evidence that he did. But I believe him."
"So what are we going to do, Mark?"
"I want you to start collecting evidence — discreetly. See if anyone else in that house had a motive to want Scott Lancer dead. If anyone asks, you can say you're gathering evidence to support the case against Johnny," Powers directed. Then he changed his mind. "On second thought, tell them the truth. Tell them we don't think Johnny did it. See if that shakes anyone up."
"Is that all? What about Johnny?"
"Well, we can't let him go, that's for sure. I've already had a message from the mayor's office ordering me to bring Lancer before a judge immediately. The Garretts are big supporters of the mayor, you know," Powers said sardonically.
Wes nodded.
"We'll keep Johnny here," Powers said. "When he wakes up, we can find out what he knows about the Garretts."
"That's fine with me," Wes said. "But aren't you going to keep getting messages from the mayor demanding an arraignment?"
"I suppose so, but I've got the perfect excuse to wait awhile," the chief constable said as he moved toward his office.
"What's that?" Wes called after him.
Powers gave his subordinate a sympathetic look. "I don't know what charge to bring against him," he explained kindly. "Attempted murder, or murder in the first degree. It all depends on your friend, Scott, doesn't it?"
The business day was just getting underway when Constable Jeremiah Wesley had two of his men put Johnny to bed in his cell. They were getting used to it. It was the second time they had put the man to bed, though this time he was merely asleep in exhaustion, not unconscious from loss of blood.
Before he went back to Harlan Garrett's mansion, Wes made a stop at the telegraph office. He'd put it off until after Johnny's interrogation, but he didn't think he should delay any longer.
Lancer Ranch
Adam Jeffers and his pinto pony headed toward Lancer at a slow canter. He felt guilty that it wasn't a gallop, but he was too reluctant to deliver the bad news to urge the pony to greater speed. Besides, the tears in his eyes made it too hard to see.
When Teresa let him into the house, Adam handed her the telegram without a word. His tear-stained face brought a lump of fear to the girl's throat. Her hand shook when she read:
SCOTT SERIOUSLY WOUNDED STOP JOHNNY ARRESTED FOR SHOOTING HIM STOP EVIDENCE STRONG BUT CIRCUMSTANTIAL STOP GARRETTS PUSHING FOR TRIAL BUT INVESTIGATION STILL UNDERWAY STOP SORRY
It was signed, "Constable Wesley, a friend of Scott's."
Teresa handed the message to Jelly Hoskins who'd appeared as soon as he saw Adam's pinto.
"My pa's already wiring Mr. Lancer," Adam said. "As soon as the message came in, he said …" The boy paused and grinned feebly. "… I guess he wouldn't want me to say exactly what he said, Miss Teresa."
Jelly snorted. The old wrangler knew Jason Jeffers' penchant for salty language. Even Teresa managed a smile.
"Anyway," Adam continued. "Pa said, if those, uh, dratted Easterners think they can set up Johnny, they're wrong. He sent a message to the station ahead of Mr. Lancer's train, telling him about this."
"You know what this means, don't ya?" Jelly asked.
Teresa nodded. Her voice was strained but steady as she replied, "It means Michaelson was wrong. The people he overheard weren't talking about killing Harlan. They were planning to kill Scott!"
Oh yeah, To Be Continued
A/N: Yes, they did do transfusions before they understood blood types. I'm no mathematician, but as best as I can tell, the odds are in favor of a transfusion. Full brothers would take after one of their parents, but it seems to me the odds are better than 50-50 because the majority of Americans are O+ (37 percent) or A+ (34 percent). And someone with O+ blood can donate to anyone with a positive blood type. The permutations are too complex for me. I think Johnny is O positive (the most common kind), so as long as Scott has a positive blood type, the transfusion will be OK. Now there' s only infection and a murderer on the loose to worry about.