Josiah, Ezra and JD headed out the following morning, back to Four Corners, while the others remained camped on the Texas plain. Buck and Chris scavenged for food while Nathan sat next to the wounded man and wondered what he should do next. The bullet was lodged far in and operating in a makeshift surgery without most of the implements and the medicines he would need would be risky at best. On the other hand, Vin was sure to die of blood poisoning if he didn't remove the bullet. As he sat and bathed the tracker's fevered brow with cool water he knew that they needed a miracle.
Later that day, a miracle showed up in the guise of a peddler.
Jacobson, the old man whose name was emblazoned across the sides of a wagon, and his daughter were on their way to Tuscosa. Having been to the rough border town many times before, their wagon was loaded down with whiskey, rudimentary medical supplies and, when it was empty and the side opened, a floor that could an excellent makeshift operating table.
As they emptied the wagon, Nathan found casks of whiskey for sterilization, brown bottles of laudanum for rudimentary anesthesia and pain control, a couple of bolts of linen for bandages and sewing kits for suturing the site. Nathan's bag held the instruments he would need and, after stripping him down, the healer started to cut into the tracker's chest to widen and lengthen the entrance wound. Vin cried out in pain and bit down on the piece of leather stuck hastily into his mouth by the peddler's daughter and, despite all that they had done to prepare, the Good Lord now held all the cards.
The bullet was close to his heart and it took some time to find it and to extract it. Nathan did so cleanly and efficiently, aided by the fact that Vin had finally passed out and had stopped moving around. Jacobson's daughter was a much better hand at sewing than any of them and, to Buck's estimation and satisfaction, stitched him up "prettier than a whore's French bloomers".
The immediate threat of lead poisoning had been averted but infection was still a real possibility. They needed to get Vin back to town.
The Jacobson's volunteered to take him the rest of the way to Tuscosa with them but a look from Chris Larabee made them reconsider. He would, instead, be taken by wagon to the closest place he would be safe and well cared for - Nettie Wells' ranch.
Two days later, Vin lay in Nettie's own double marriage bed. It was the same bed, along with the Sharps rifle, that she and her husband had brought with them when they had settled their small ranch years before Four Corners was even a jog in the road.
Just as Nathan had feared, infection had set in and, with Nettie's help, he opened up the wound site just enough to insert a lamp wick to help it drain. Nothing seemed to work and the tracker hovered between the world of the living and that of the dead, calling out from time to time for his mother and for Hannity.
"Who's this Hannity he keeps calling to?" Nettie asked as she dipped a cloth into a bowl of cold well water. wringing it out, she placed it back on Vin's forehead.
Chris, watching from a chair parked by the window, told her, "The bounty hunter who was takin' him to Tuscosa."
"He do this to him?" Nettie pointed to the wound.
"As far as we know, she didn't. There was a second bounty hunter who evidently wanted to take Vin in dead."
"That why you're always lookin' out that window?" she asked with a knowing look.
"If she doubles back, I'll be waitin' for her."
"Let's hope she's smarter than that," Nettie said with a smile giving a nod to the Sharps standing tall in the corner of the room.
Vin moaned and twisted agitatedly in the bed. The old woman soothed him as best she could and he opened his eyes.
"Ma?"
Although Nettie liked to think of herself as a surrogate mother to the comely and well-mannered Texan, Vin was clearly delusional. His mother, herself almost a child when he was born, had died when he was a small boy. However, if he saw his ma in her face, Nettie would do nothing to shatter the illusion.
"I'm here, son," she said in a soothing voice and her patient immediately calmed.
Vin asked for water and she obliged him, holding a cup to his pale lips. In contrast, his cheeks were flame red from the fever that continued to rage inside of him. She continued to worry and fret over him while Casey and JD sat outside on the fence together, presumably to keep a look out for Nathan's return.
At his wit's end, the healer had gone to Eagle Bend to try and find something that would cure the infection and, when he did finally return, both Casey and JD ran to meet him. He had brought with him silver nitrate, carbolic acid and willow bark, the first two to irrigate the wound and the last to bring his fever down to a manageable level. He also had new lamp wicks with him.
Nathan dosed the Texan again with laudanum then pulled the old wick from the wound. It was soaked with putridity and smelled accordingly. He then drenched a new wick in the silver nitrate and wiped Vin's chest down liberally with carbolic acid before inserting the new wick into the wound. After that, the only thing left for him to do was to pray that these ministrations would do the trick.
It took a few more days of waiting and hoping...and praying...but the tracker finally took a turn for the better. He looked more dead than alive but his skin was cool to the touch and the wound was threatening to close around the wick. Nathan offered up the laudanum before he pulled it out but Vin declined. He left the wound open so it would continue to drain and heal on its own.
Under the diligent care and watchful eyes of the Wells women, Vin was soon able to sit up. A few days later he could walk from his bed to sit at the table where he quickly gained back some of the weight he had lost. He even spent a short amount of time sitting on the porch each day watching JD mend the corral fences he himself had told Nettie he would fix just days before his ill fated trip.
Vin's head was soon clear and his thoughts were lucid but something niggled at the back of his mind when he replayed the ambush over again in his mind. There was something he couldn't quit put a finger on. It didn't really matter, however, because it was just a matter of time before he saw Hannity again and, hopefully, anything that was bothering him would be forgotten.