The elder woman eyed the ugly, venomous ridge across the neck of the unconscious man and grimaced, then tested the sharpness of the razor. She nodded as the slightest of pressure nicked the skin of her thumb and drew a hairline of blood.
"Wound's poisoned, you got to get the poison out," she proclaimed. "That's commonsense and I don't need no medical training to tell me that. And time anyone got to town and brought Doc Patterson back, this feller would be past helping."
She got to her feet and crossed to the fire, there to squat down before it and, protecting her hand from the heat with her apron, thrust the blade of the razor into the flames.
"I think I feel sick," Grace said, swallowing hard, her wide eyes staring in horrified fascination at the flames licking up the blade.
Margaret Hope looked at the pale face of her daughter and smiled to take the harshness out of her words. "It was you who found him, so you've got to help me. Bring that bowl and be ready to mop up the mess when it bursts out. Likely to smell a bit which won't help your stomach none but now you know about it, you'll expect it. That water looks to be boiling, girl. Let's get it over with and see if he's toting a bullet in there."
There was already a heap of clean clothes on the bed—shreds of tom-up sheet—and Margaret Hope arranged these around the wound as her daughter set down the steaming pan on a nearby chair.
"At least he won't feel it." Grace said.
"Course he won't," her mother snapped, her sudden anger revealing for the first time her own distaste for what lay ahead. She was immediately penitent for the slip and reached out to brush gentle fingers down her daughter's forearm. "Be brave, Grace," she murmured. "It must be done."
Her hand trembled as she lowered the blade of the razor, but became abruptly steady as the point touched and then sank into the sliver-thin, septic skin. Grace swayed but fought for self-control as the first spout of pus erupted, then gasped in horror as the blade travelled the length of the wound and the man's neck was suddenly running with yellow and green poison which gave off a nauseating odor.
"Wet cloths, girl," her mother demanded and Grace scalded her hand without feeling pain as she complied. The razor dropped to the floor, and the first swab followed it, white with an ugly stain. Working with haste and feminine gentleness, the elder woman accepted each new soaking cloth from her daughter, bathed the poison from the wound and discarded it. And soon the staining changed color, from the subdued tones of venom to the bright scarlet of fresh, clean blood. The man did not move or make a sound, but his body reacted with great beads of sweat which oozed from each pore to soak the bed-linen.
Margaret Hope sighed as she looked at the cleaned wound, bright red at the center with a darker coloration of inflammation along each side. "It was a bullet," she pronounced. "Creased him deep but didn't stay."
Grace had kept her eyes averted during the primitive surgery. Now she looked at the man and drew in her breath sharply. "It still looks..."
"I know," her mother answered. "He's still making poison, but we won't get at it like this. Bring the medicine chest, girl. All we can do now is put some salve on him, cover it and then keep him sweating to kill the fever." She used the back of a hand to brush sweat from her own forehead. "Then it's up to him. I reckon if he's got the spirit to live, he'll pull through."
"We could pray for him," Grace murmured.
Her mother nodded. "Reckon we could, Grace. We ain't no doctors but we did pretty good. So maybe we could pray and it won't matter that we ain't been to church since last Christmas. You say the words, daughter. You speak prettier than me and the Lord's a man."
As Grace sank to her knees and began to move her lips in silent prayer, her mother continued to stand by the bedside, clasping her hands together. The rain seemed to slacken during the appeal for mercy, but when it was over, came down with an increasing intensity.
"Weather’ll slow down your father and brother," Margaret Hope said pensively. "Kansas City ain't no Sunday ride at the best of times."
"Wonder where he comes from?" Grace asked, nodding to the man on the bed.
"Somewhere I want no part of," Margaret answered. "That's just one more wound he's got. He's been shot lots of times before. I don't think he's a good man, Grace. Feller who carries a razor like he does don't only use it for shaving."
The two women looked down at Edge, each with her own thoughts about the kind of man he was.
CHAPTER THREE
HEDGES and Captain Gordon Leaman, each with a party of twenty troopers, rode three miles ahead of the main body of McClellan's army. Leaman's group was north of the railroad tracks while Hedges kept to the south. As they pushed eastwards in the pale light of pre-dawn they were sometimes lost to each other behind low rises of areas of timber. But for the most part each group had sight of the soldiers in the other as they scouted the route for the main body.
Hedges had the first hangover of his life and was not enjoying the dull ache behind his eyes, the insistent thirst that irritated his dry throat and the cramps in his stomach. But counteracting his discomfort was a taut feeling of excitement compounded by the thrill of impending action and a nagging doubt, amounting almost to fear, of how he might react to it. He sensed that the men who rode behind him were experiencing a similar set of emotions. Previous troop movements had been made in the safe knowledge that the territory they covered held no dangers and inevitably the monotony of the circumstances had whetted the appetite for a confrontation with the enemy. But this period was now over and every man under McClellan's command was aware of this. To anticipate danger from a distance and face it bravely was easy to view it at close quarters with the awareness that the courageous sentiments had to be supported by deeds was a situation many men found hard to bear.
Not least a man like Hedges who recognized, for the first time since donning his officer's insignia, that the men at his back were placing a great deal of trust in him. Blind trust, since he was as untried in war as they were. And because of his own self-doubt, Hedges felt the responsibility heavily upon his aching shoulders but not weighty enough to dull the keen edge of his anticipation.
"Looks like a town ahead, sir."
The sergeant was older than Hedges. He was about thirty-five, a farmer with a wife pregnant for the fifth time. He was not an intelligent man, and this showed in the dull flatness of his widely spaced eyes and the narrowness of his brows. But he was a hard man, expert with a rifle. Until today Hedges had considered him too stupid to experience fear, but now as the sergeant pointed ahead to where three columns of white smoke rose in the clear, still air, the man's forefinger was shaking. Hedges looked into the dull, sallow complexioned face of the man and saw the features were set in a stiff mask that emphasized rather than concealed his inner torment.
"Philippi," Hedges answered with a nod, not having to consult a map. "Last report we had indicated a group of fifty rebels there."
His tone was soft and even and the sergeant looked hard into the face of his officer. It was not a handsome quality that commanded attention. Beneath a head of thickly growing, short-cut black hair the forehead sloped to prominent brows which jutted out above deep-set, ocean blue eyes. The eyelids were slung low over the eyes, hooding them so that the man seemed to view the world about him with a close, suspicious scrutiny. The nose flared wide at the nostrils and the mouth, as if complementing the eyes, was thin and when the lips curled back it was difficult to decide whether he was smiling or sneering. The clean-shaven jawline was finely chiseled and resolute, completing the appearance of a man who looked and probably was as hard as the situation demanded. The sergeant hoped that he was.