The Rescue 42
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Kitty was torn as to what to do first. She had a live man that desperately needed tending and she had a dead man lying in the middle of the floor. A dead man that had tried to kill her and her husband.
Deciding the dead man could wait, Kitty tugged with what little strength she had until she finally got Matt on his back near the fire. Covering him over with a blanket, she quickly tended the fire and then checked his side. It wasn't pretty but it wasn't deep and she felt sure she could get the bullet out.
Reaching into their bag of supplies, she found the nightgown Maura had given her. After tearing it into strips, she laid it aside and dug into the bag again, hoping for whiskey or something to sterilize and clean. She came up without that but she did find the pan they used. Quickly, she put it onto the fire and filled it with water.
While the water boiled she dug into Matt's pocket and found his knife. She placed that on the fire and then set about getting his shirt off and cleaning the wound as best she could. Once the water was boiled and the knife was sterilized she sat about removing the bullet. She'd seen Doc do it enough times, she thought she could.
But she didn't realize how difficult it would be for her emotionally. It wasn't Doc, with his years of experience and skill, operating on Matt. It was her and she felt woefully underequipped for the task. Still, she was the only one there and she had no choice, if she wanted him to live. And she surely did want him to live.
Swallowing her fear, she did what she had to as quickly as she could, finally finishing up with as large and thick a bandage as she could make. She had no needles or thread and though it horrified her to have to do it, she had seared the wound closed with the hot blade of Matt's knife. The smell of burning flesh, she knew, would forever remain in the back of her mind but it was at least done.
When her task was completed and she'd covered Matt with both of their blankets, she turned her attention to the dead man. She needed him out of there but after tugging and pulling on him for some time, she realized she wasn't able to do it alone.
Thoughtfully, she studied the problem and the dead man. Something was sticking out of his shirt pocket. Reaching into his pocket, she quickly pulled the papers free and looked at them. They explained a lot but they didn't help her with her dilemma. How do you pull a dead man when you're not strong enough to do so?
Then it dawned on her. She couldn't pull him, but a horse could. Checking again on Matt, and reassuring herself that he was, for now, okay, she grabbed her coat and went outside. The hateful man's horse was just in front, tethered to a bush. With a sigh of relief, she liberated the rope from the saddle horn, untied the horse and led him to the door.
Back inside the shack, she quickly wrapped the man's stiffening legs with rope and tied it tight. Taking the other end of the rope, she stepped back outside and tied it to the saddle horn. It took some convincing and a lot of pulling but she finally got the horse to back up, turn around and walk.
Trying desperately hard not to think about what she was doing, Kitty led the horse around the derelict little house and to the yard behind it. When they had discovered the little building that afternoon, they had also discovered a dry, abandoned well in the back, covered with several boards.
Holding tightly to the horse's reins, she led him to the well and a little beyond until the blond haired man, who looked so much like the monster in her nightmares, was lying beside the hole in the ground. Quickly removing the boards, she untied the corpse's legs and rolled him over into the dark cavern below the ground, covering the hole back over after he'd disappeared from sight.
She spent the next four days, tending to Matt, wiping his brow, forcing liquid down his throat and praying fervently that he'd survive. Her exhaustion reached epic proportions but she pushed it aside. Several times she found her self, sitting beside him, in a half doze, conscious of nothing but the sound of his breathing. She forced herself to eat, though the food had no taste, simply because she knew the baby needed it.
But her mind and her heart were on the big man beside her, when, despite her best efforts, Matt developed a fever. And for a couple of days, she was certain she was going to lose him.
But Matt Dillon was a stubborn man and he clung tenaciously to life. When his fever broke, Kitty laid her head on his chest and cried. Forgotten for the moment was her exhaustion and fear. She had him back and right then, that was all that mattered.
Later that evening, he awoke to a throbbing pain in his side and a cool cloth on his forehead. His head was resting in Kitty's lap. "Kit… Kitty?"
"Ssshhh." Kitty whispered. "Don't move, Matt. Just lay still, please."
Matt swallowed hard trying to moisten his dry throat. But he only succeeded in irritating it, making him cough which made his side throb all the more.
Kitty instantly grabbed their canteen and placed it against his lips. "Here." She said. "Sip some of this. Slowly, Matt. Just sip."
Gratefully, Matt took the water in his mouth and let it slowly travel down his throat. When he felt like he could speak, he looked back up at her. "How… long?"
"Four days." She answered. "I got the bullet out and got the bleeding stopped, but you've had a fever. I've been doing what I can but until this morning when your fever broke, I…" A sob escaped her and she couldn't continue. She didn't want to voice the fear that had consumed her for the past few days. The fear that after all they'd come through, she'd lose him. "You're going to be alright." She finally said.
Matt looked around the shack. "Where's…?"
"I drug him outside." She said. "Or at least me and his horse did. I couldn't manage him alone."
Matt looked at her a little curiously. "Is he still…"
"Oh, no." Kitty smiled. "Once I got him outside, I steered the horse to that old well in the back. For all intents and purposes, he's buried."
Matt grinned. "You never cease to amaze me."
"Well," Kitty ducked her head. "I wasn't out to amaze you. I was out to protect the both of us." Suddenly she remembered the posters. "Oh, look what I found. I saw these sticking out of his pocket." Reaching into her blouse, she pulled out three pieces of paper and handed them to Matt, helping him to sit up in the process so he could look at them.
They were wanted posters. One, the worst of the three, was for Kitty. Five thousand dollars reward for her, dead or alive. The second one was a fugitive John Doe warrant, issued for anyone found in the company of Kitty Russell and proven to be assisting her. The third one was the most interesting. It was a poster for one Clark Grafton, wanted for murder and bank robbery. The reward was five hundred dollars.
Matt looked up at her. "This man…"
"He was the one." Kitty answered. "The one that shot you and is now lying in that well out there."
"This explains him coming in after us." He waved her poster.
"But he had a bounty on his head too, Matt." Kitty pointed out. "Wouldn't he have been afraid he'd get caught when he turned us in?"
Matt shrugged. "Depends on where he took us. Some Sherriff's wouldn't look twice at a bounty hunter. They'd just pay em to get em out of town. This third one is good news though." He tapped the John Doe warrant.
Kitty looked curiously at him. "Why would a warrant on you be good?"
"Because it's not on me." Matt grinned. "It's on John Doe. That means they still don't know for sure that you and I are together. It means I can still use my badge to…" He stopped, remembering his decision to get rid of it permanently. "Well," he sighed. "At least my face isn't on a poster."
Kitty smiled and got to her feet. Stepping over to the mantle of the fireplace, she picked something up and knelt back down beside him. "You can still use it." She said with a smile as she handed him his badge, tarnished from the fire and a little worse for the wear but still recognizable as representing the office of the US Marshal.
Shocked, Matt stared at it then at her. "How…?"
"When you tossed it into the fireplace, it didn't quite land in the fire. It landed on the edge. I didn't believe you when you said it wasn't part of you. I know better. So I thought I'd rescue it, in case we need it again."
Matt grinned as he accepted the piece of metal from her. "Like I said, you never cease to amaze me."
TBC