Heath heard the gunshot and turned his horse to the trail that lead north toward the house. He saw the group ahead of him and galloped to catch up.
Riding up alongside Tom, he asked, "Where d'you find 'em?"
Tom said, "I didn't. Grace did."
Heath looked over at his young daughter and could not have been prouder of her than he was in that moment. He wanted to hear all about it but first he looked the boys over. Aside from looking rather dejected, Daniel looked fine. James, Heath thought, had a look of dread on his dirty, scratched face. Heath looked him up and down and knew they'd gotten more than just lost: One of them had been injured.
Tom rode ahead to alert everyone that the boys had been found and were on their way. Jane and the girls came out of the house to greet them. At the sight of James, Jane placed her hand over her open mouth but recovered and ushered him into the house.
Emily and Sarah were coming out from the kitchen where they were keeping dinner warm and found Heath standing in back of the excited little crowd. Jane suggested they should send for the doctor but Emily thought James should be examined first and instructed Jane to bring the boy into the kitchen. Heath agreed with Emily.
"How about you, Cowboy?" she asked Daniel, "You hurt?"
"No, Momma."
"Well, good," she said, and went to join Jane and James in the kitchen, followed by Tom and Audra.
James sat on the kitchen table while his mother looked him over and noted a number of scratches and abrasions, none of which were serious.
"He says the cut is pretty deep," Jane told Emily when she came into the kitchen.
Emily pulled up a chair, put the boy's foot in her lap, and began to expertly and gently unwrap the bloody bandages, edged in lace that she recognized as her own handiwork.
"Did Grace wrap this?" she asked James. He nodded. Amazing Grace, indeed, thought Emily. "How did you get this cut?"
"On some rocks," he replied.
"They were on the High Ridge!" Tom said, angrily.
"You didn't try to go down the ridge, did you?" Emily asked, teasing, because no one with a brain would ever try to climb down that ridge. But James nodded his head again.
She stopped and looked at him, now thinking maybe only little boys and people with no brains would try to go down that ridge, then she resumed unwrapping, "You're lucky you're still alive, Cowboy," she said calmly, "Did Daniel go down the ridge with you?"
"No, Ma'am," James answered.
As the final bandage was removed and the cut was exposed to view, Jane and Vicky, who had joined her, turned away.
Emily looked closely at the wound and stated, "Well, this is a common injury among cowboys and it's going to need stitches." Then she asked Tom to get her sewing basket and some whisky. He started to leave but she stopped him with another request. "Oh, Tom! We're going to need a leather strap, too," she said very seriously.
"Yes, Ma'am," Tom said with equal seriousness, a charade he maintained till he was well out of the kitchen.
"A leather strap?" asked James.
Emily turned to look at him. "For biting, Cowboy. Takes your mind off the pain," she said gravely.
Audra was looking in a cupboard and said, "We used to keep a box of bandages in here but I guess that was a long time ago."
"Oh, we still do, but we keep it up high, away from small children," said Emily, and she smiled at Audra, pointing to where the box was now kept.
As Audra brought the box down, Emily told Jane they could send for the doctor but explained that the doctor couldn't do anything she couldn't do and, besides, she said, she was much better with a needle and thread than he was. Jane smiled slightly and nodded her head.
Audra took down a bowl, placed it on the table next to James, and then started chipping away at the ice in the icebox.
Tom went into the parlor to get the whisky and to look for his mother's sewing basket. There, Will had joined Heath and Sarah and the rest of the girls, including Julia, in hearing Daniel and Grace recount their adventure. Heath and Sarah had been particularly amused at how Grace and Daniel took turns saying, "You should have seen Grace!" and "You should have seen Daniel!"when they first started to tell about it. By now, they were calmer and Heath was asking Daniel for details about how they came to be at the High Ridge to begin with but he was getting distracted by Tom shuffling the bottles of alcohol stored in a high cabinet.
"What're you looking for there?" Heath asked.
"Whisky. And Mother's sewing basket," replied Tom.
"I believe the sewing basket is in the billiards room," said Sarah.
"And so is the cheaper whisky!" Heath called after him as he walked away.
Passing the parlor on his way back to the kitchen with the needed items, Tom told Will that they needed a leather strap. Will suppressed a grin and got up to go to the tack room in the barn to retrieve just such an item. They appreciated that their mother made little boys bite on a leather strap when they got stitched up; they had known her to do this for years. Daniel followed Tom into the kitchen so he could watch.
Whisky and cold water were mixed in the bowl and bandages placed in it to soak. Audra and Jane used some of those bandages to clean the scrapes and small cuts on the boy's face, hands, and arms.
Emily took the smallest needle she could find in the basket and threaded it with silk thread and that, too, was placed in the bowl. Next, she searched the bottom of the box of bandages and pulled out a vial of toothache drops.* Several drops of toothache medicine were added to the whisky bowl.
Audra wrapped some ice in a whisky-soaked bandage and placed it firmly on the cut. While they all waited for the area of the cut to numb, Will came in with a small leather strap which he handed to James.
"Here," said Will, gravely, "this always helps me."
"Now," Emily told James, "first we have to wash that cut so you don't get an infection."
"Grace already did that!" said James, hoping to minimize his future pain. "She ran water through it from her canteen." Of course she did, thought Emily.
"Water is good, whisky is better," Emily said, and proceeded to the wring out a bandage close to the top edge of the cut. The whisky cleaned the wound and toothache medicine helped numb it. James didn't flinch. She repeated this a couple of times, telling him that it was his grandmother who taught her how to treat cowboy injuries. When she was done, Audra returned the icy bandage to the cut.
"You're doing good there, Cowboy," Emily said. She rubbed a few toothache drops directly onto the edges of the cut. Then, she took up her needle and inserted it into an edge at the bottom of the cut.
"How does that feel?" she asked.
"I can feel it but it's not too bad," said James.
"Good. Let's begin." Emily's hand was swift and certain and her stitches even. She moved the needle with her right hand while her left hand held the edges of the cut together. Audra moved the icy bandage upwards, keeping pace with Emily's stitches, and leaving her just enough space to work. James flinched and winced a few times but he didn't cry or move his leg.
Smack dab in the middle of this delicate operation, Nick and Jarrod burst through the front door, Nick yelling, "Where are they?" He did not sound happy.
Nick and Jarrod had met up on the trail leading to the house and heard the news of the boys' safe return from the hands when they brought their horses in to be curried. It was now almost dark and both men were on edge; they had spent their entire journey not knowing if their sons were safe.
Heath told them James was getting stitched up in the kitchen and offered them a brief summary of the day's adventure. Nick stayed to have a drink and hear more of the story but Jarrod, on hearing how his son had insisted on going past the gate and then tried to go down the ridge, quickly left the parlor for the kitchen.
Emily was tying off the final stitch when Jarrod walked in. James was relieved to see his father. He had never had stitches before and he knew he had tolerated the procedure well. Jarrod, however, was not impressed with his son; he was furious.
Audra wrapped the boy's leg in fresh, dry bandages and when she was done and James pronounced whole, Jarrod ordered the boy into the library. Vicky had been sent to the guesthouse to retrieve another set of clothes for James to wear and had already handed them to Jane.
Nick entered the kitchen as Jarrod and Jane were following their son out of it and ordered Daniel to go upstairs and wait in his room. Daniel looked at his mother who nodded while also giving him a look that told him it would be okay. It was not a look anyone else might have noticed, it was that subtle, but Daniel was very good at reading his mother.
Nick started up the back kitchen stairs after his youngest son but stopped and turned when Emily said, "Nick?"
"I want to hear him tell it!" Nick said. He was emphatic.
Tom and Will had vanished quickly from the kitchen when their father arrived. Audra remained there, cleaning up, listening.
"He's just a little boy, Nick," Emily said.
"He's a little boy who disobeyed an order and I want to hear his reason!"
Nick knew more of the story than Emily did. All Emily really knew was that James had tried to climb down the ridge and Daniel did not and that to get there they had to go through the south gate, something they had been told not to do.
Emily sighed and followed Nick up the back stairs.
* Yes, those toothache drops. The numbing agent in those toothache drops was widely available over-the-counter and, near as I can figure, would have been used as a general topical anesthetic in the 1890s.